Dan Gable
Dan Gable
Danny Mack "Dan" Gableis a retired American Olympic wrestler and head coach. He is best known for his tenure as head coach at the University of Iowa where he won 15 NCAA team titles between 1976 and 1997. He is also famous for having only lost one match in his entire Iowa State University collegiate career – his last – and winning a gold medal at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, while not giving up a single point...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWrestler
Date of Birth25 October 1948
CityWaterloo, IA
CountryUnited States of America
All I worried about was what Owings was doing to me, instead of what I was doing to him. When you start worrying about that stuff, you're going down the wrong path.
Wrestling is the only sport I've ever competed in that puts you totally in a situation of constant motion without breaks. I could play football or baseball, swim -- but there's always some kind of situation that would break my thoughts, break my concentration.
But we've got to work. We can't just live on reputations at all - by any means.
Great wrestlers make other wrestlers great
If we don't progress, we backslide into bad habits, laziness and poor attitude.
I can take anyone down at anytime; they can't take me down; no one can ride or turn me; I can control anyone.
Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.
Wrestlers are a little more dedicated than, and are different from, the other people, which may be strange.
I shoot, I score. He shoots, I score.
The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.
You can't ever work too much because there's no such thing as being in too good condition. You can't ever lift too many weights because you can't ever get too strong. You can't ever wrestle too much because you can always do better.
I never won anything by myself. I was always strong because of help that gave me extra strength to win.
There's always ways of motivating yourself to higher levels. Write about it, dream about it. But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.
Always remember the pain of defeat, and never let it happen again.