Rulon Gardner survives weekend plane crash

CONCORD, Mass. (AP) -- Rulon Gardner has a whole new tale of survival to add to his motivational speeches.

The Olympic gold medalist was back on a plane, back on the speaker's circuit and back on a wrestling mat just days after a plane crash plunged him into a frigid lake near the Arizona-Utah border. Adding the encounter to his growing list of near-miracles, Gardner said Tuesday that his harrowing weekend "is an experience I still can't comprehend."

"I saw God. I saw Jesus. I saw my dead brother. They told me it's time to come home," Gardner told the students and faculty at a suburban Boston prep school. "I said, 'Please, not yet. I'm just starting to get good."'

Wearing jeans on a campus where they're not allowed and a leather jacket adorned with the Olympic rings, Gardner spoke at the Middlesex School about setting goals and reaching them for about an hour. When the theater had to clear out for national French exams, he went over to the athletic building to give a wrestling clinic.

Why hop on a plane just two days after crashing in one? For the same reason he resumed wrestling just six months after he nearly lost his feet to frostbite in a previous outdoor ordeal.

"My friends asked me, 'What are you trying to prove?"' Gardner told the hushed crowd. "I said, 'Nothing to you, but something to me."'

An aspiring pilot, Gardner was a passenger in a small plane that clipped the surface of Good Hope Bay with its wheels on Saturday and splashed into the icy water. Although he isn't much of a swimmer, his friends coaxed him into leaving behind his "man purse" and jacket and swimming the backstroke 2 miles to shore.

The three huddled together overnight for warmth until morning, when they were spotted by a fishing boat and rescued.

"You worry when you start getting goofy," Gardner said. "I was there. I pulled myself back."

Gardner's visit to this sprawling campus a few miles from the birthplace of the American Revolution had been arranged since the fall. But the folks at Middlesex weren't sure whether to expect him after hearing about his accident.

"Anybody in their right mind would expect a person without the kind of drive he has to think of canceling," athletic director Joe Lang said. "Now, after listening to him talk, I think this is probably part of his whole being.

"The gold medal is one thing. But him, as a person -- the message he gave was great."

For Gardner, it's the same philosophy that took him from his family's farm to the Greco-Roman gold in 2000, when he ended Alexander Karelin's 13-year international winning streak -- one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history.

And it's the same philosophy that saw him through to another rescue in 2002, when he was stranded in the woods while snowmobiling in Idaho. That time, his core body temperature dropped more than 10 degrees, and he was lucky he only lost one of his toes to frostbite.

"Everyone thinks I'm either the luckiest man in the world or I'm invincible," he said with a shrug. "I'm just me."

Despite recounting the ways he could have died, and remarking more than once that he was lucky to be alive, Gardner had no hesitation about getting on another plane after his latest close call; he actually boarded one on Sunday after the rescue, and again on Monday to fly to Boston.

"Everybody's going, 'Why are you here? You could have canceled,"' he said. "My responsibility is to come here. I hope you're looking forward to it, because I do."

Mixing in tales of his rescues with those from his wrestling career where he was similarly overmatched, Gardner stepped over to a mat and called a student out of the crowd for a demonstration of the move that defeated Karelin.

But Middlesex junior Mike Cimino -- half bemused and half terrified -- couldn't get his arms around Gardner's massive torso to lock his hands.

Later, Gardner changed into a black T-shirt and a borrowed pair of school shorts to give a clinic for the wrestling team. Coach Dave Gutbrod took the brunt of it, blinking away the pain when Gardner demonstrated the finer points -- repeatedly -- of a neck smash.

Gutbrod's varsity is 1-13 this season and lacking enough participants to cover all the weight classes.

And yet their season is surely not without a highlight.

"This usually is not a big sport here, and Rulon wanted to give it a little pump," Lang said. "If the students pick up only a portion of what he's saying, I think it was a great day."