Nine minutes: How the Sydney Olympics changed wrestler Rulon Gardner's life

Nine minutes. That was all it took to change Rulon Gardner's life, for better or worse — one nine-minute wrestling match against a legendary Russian, and here he is, almost seven years later, still riding the wave of his Olympic triumph in Sydney.

The wave has brought him to Utah and deposited him in a mountainside home, high above North Salt Lake, where he lives conspicuously alone when he is here at all.

He spends 200 to 300 days a year on the road, telling people the story of how a Wyoming farm boy slew Goliath. He spends so many days on the road that he moved here to be close to Salt Lake International Airport, which can be seen from his balcony. He plans to buy a private plane soon to save travel time; he will pilot the plane himself. His life is travel, speaking and phone calls, all spin-offs from those magical nine minutes.

"When we first went to Sydney, we had no idea what was ahead of us," says Gardner's father, Reed, a retired dairy farmer.

The Olympic champ is now a professional motivational speaker, and the mention of this appellation causes Gardner, who is sitting at a table in his kitchen tapping intermittently at a laptop to check e-mail, to launch into an imitation of late comedian Chris Farley's famous Matt Foley character. He's got the voice, shape (300 pounds plus) and comedic instincts to pull it off.

"My name is Matt Foley," he begins, "and I'm a motivational speaker; I'm 35 years old and I live in a van down by the river."

But, of course, Gardner, now the same age as Foley, is not exactly living in a van down by the river eating government cheese. He is surrounded by the tell-tale signs of money. He lives in this spacious house, with its panoramic view of the Great Salt Lake and Bountiful. There is a 14-foot TV screen downstairs, along with a sauna/steam room. The two-car garage is crammed with a Hummer (license plate: KUJO), a vintage Mustang, an Audi and a Harley. In the driveway there is a shiny black pickup (GOLD), and parked elsewhere is a boat and a Jeep, and soon he will add the airplane to his transportation collection.

"I'm still blown away," says Gardner. "Every day is a miracle. I was going to be a first-year, 34-year-old P.E. teacher in Afton, Wyo."

Instead, he is a professional speechmaker who earns more in one week than a teacher makes in a year, pulling down about a million dollars annually. He travels 300,000 miles in a year and gives well over 100 speeches to groups ranging from John Hancock, AT&T, IBM, Wal-Mart and Blue Cross to pharmaceutical companies, farm organizations and schools. He pockets $10,000 to $15,000 per gig.

"He spent nine minutes on the mat with that ugly man from Russia," Reed Gardner likes to say with a laugh. "I spent 50 to 60 years on the farm, and I don't have nothin."'

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