#152 – Dan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2021
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan Gable is one of the greatest Olympic athletes and wrestling coaches of all time. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Dan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dannygable
Dan’s Website: https://dangable.com/
Dan’s Books: https://amzn.to/2VK5nbn
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(09:31) – Russian wrestling
(11:09) – Coaching the science, art, and toughness of wrestling
(18:05) – The pain of defeat and the tattoo of a hawk clawing out the heart
(21:04) – Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile
(24:09) – The dream of becoming an Olympic champion
(26:38) – The day in 1972 of the Olympic final
(30:10) – Sauna story
(31:39) – Match against the Russian
(37:13) – The role of fear in wrestling
(42:14) – The line between physical wrestling and anger
(46:53) – Tragic loss of Dan’s sister
(54:21) – The role of family in wrestling
(59:43) – Wrestling being voted out of the Olympics
(1:04:26) – To beat the best you must study the best
(1:09:39) – The role of luck (Old Man and the Sea)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Dan Gabel from two years ago. |
| 0:04.1 | I did not previously publish this conversation as part of this podcast, but as a separate |
| 0:09.2 | thing. |
| 0:10.2 | As a result, it did not receive many listens. |
| 0:13.7 | Let me be honest and say that while I usually don't care about how many listens review |
| 0:18.3 | something gets in this one case, I feel like I failed one of my heroes. |
| 0:23.6 | I feel I didn't properly introduce a truly special human being to an audience that might |
| 0:28.5 | find him as inspiring as I did. |
| 0:31.4 | Dan Gabel is one of the greatest Olympic athletes of all time. |
| 0:36.4 | Bigger than records and medals, to many like myself, he's a symbol of guts, spirit, |
| 0:42.2 | mental toughness, and relentless hard work. |
| 0:45.5 | As a wrestler, he was undefeated in high school, undefeated in college until his very last |
| 0:50.8 | match and having lost that match, he found another level and became a world champion |
| 0:56.9 | in an Olympic champion. |
| 0:58.7 | And most importantly, he did so perfectly dominating his opponents. |
| 1:03.4 | He did not surrender a single point at the 1972 Olympic Games. |
| 1:07.8 | As a coach, he led the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 national titles and 25 consecutive Big |
| 1:13.5 | Town Championships. |
| 1:15.1 | He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 national champions, 106 Big Town champions, and 12 Olympians, |
| 1:23.3 | including 8 medalists. |
| 1:25.4 | He's the author of several books, including a wrestling life one and two, and coaching |
| 1:30.7 | wrestling successfully. |
... |
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