Tears flow as Gardner takes bronze, retires

ATHENS, Greece — He cried, he hugged people, he wrapped himself in the flag, he bid an emotional farewell.

It was the finals of the Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling tournament, and Rulon Gardner went ahead as planned with his retirement party, despite the fact the decorations were bronze, not gold.

The man who four years ago beat the unbeatable man got beaten — by a 23-year-old from Tsalenjikha, Kazakhstan, named Georgiy Tsurtsumia, who relegated Gardner to the bronze-medal match with a 4-1 overtime victory in the semifinals.

Then Tsurtsumia was beaten in the gold-medal match by a 21-year-old fellow speaker of the Russian language, Khasan Baroev of Russia.

Seeing all this, the 33-year-old Gardner, from Afton, Wyo., did what the Russian from Siberia, Alexander Karelin, did four years ago in Sydney after Gardner beat him for the gold medal. He retired. Hung 'em up.

Only in this case, laid 'em out.

Leaving absolutely no room for a Michael Jordan-type retirement reversal, he sat in the center of the Olympic mat and in full view of everyone in the arena took off his wrestling shoes.

Just seconds before, he had avenged the morning loss to Tsurtsumia with a 3-0 overtime victory over a 6-foot-7 Iranian from Tehran named Sajad Barzi, who is all of 23.

The shoe retirement was a teary scene for everyone. Barzi was in tears because he lost, while Rulon was in tears because he won and because he doesn't have to make weight and wrestle guys like Baroev, Tsurtsumia and Barzi anymore.

Then Rulon's coach, Steve Fraser, starting crying. And in the stands, where Rulon's friends and family unfurled a bedsheet signed by well-wishers back home in Afton, they were crying too.

Amid all the tears, Rulon Gardner left wrestling with considerably more visibility, not to mention sentiment, than when he entered. He was 4 or 5 years old when he started — with eight older brothers and sisters, it wasn't an option — and it was years before he ever got on top of anyone.

He toiled in typical wrestler's anonymity for decades until he did two things that would dramatically change his profile. One was switching from freestyle wrestling to Greco-Roman, a little-used discipline in the United States that doesn't allow the use of the legs for holds and favors people with brute upper body strength, like Rulon, as well as just about everyone, it seems, from Eastern Europe.