An interview with Dan Gable

VINTON – In between speaking to students and signing books for whoever wanted one, Olympic gold medalist and Iowa wrestling legend Dan Gable was gracious enough to sit down with me and answer a few of my questions. To me, Dan Gable is not only a sports and human inspiration, but he’s also the subject of one of my all-time favorite pieces of journalism.

I used this interview opportunity to ask him a couple of questions that have been on my mind for two years.

Blake Baxter: What exactly motivated you to write the book (A Wrestling Life: The Inspiring Stories of Dan Gable)?

Dan Gable: Oh, I’ve had other books. I didn’t really – people are always trying to get me to do another biography of my life. When I was a coach, I never put out any wrestling books or tapes. Once I stopped, I got 15 out, but I focus on what I focus on. There’s a time in your life when you need to focus on some things that can be really – not just keep your name going – but actually affect other people. I’ve affected other people while I was coaching, while I was wrestling, but this is just another way to help keep that focus to help people, because people need stuff like this.

BB: Being from Illinois and being a soccer player, and not being exposed to wrestling a great deal growing up, I didn’t really become familiar with you and your career until you were fighting to save the Olympics (Olympic wrestling).

DG: I had to step back up again because most people in this whole sport worldwide respect me and I’ve never really gotten away from it, but I needed to step up my ability to affect our leadership. And even though people always want me to be in these leadership roles, my best thing is coaching our leadership because I’m not the type of guy that can actually be in these roles because I’m too much of a family guy. I have to stay home.

DG: Health and family. I was kind of beat up a little. I had to get back together.

DG: It’s that we really needed a kick in the butt. We were not doing a very good job of promoting our sport and following other leaders’ directions, and we needed to really change a lot of things.

DG: Yep, Scott Schulte. He was at the Olympic trials and he just caught me in a moment when one of our wrestler athletes got beat and he asked me about wanting to do an article on my sister for an internet thing, so that’s how we got hooked up. Otherwise this probably wouldn’t have happened yet.

BB: I haven’t read it yet, but what I’ve read is the ESPN.com article by Wright Thompson.

BB: Isn’t it amazing? I read it when it came out and I read it again this weekend.

DG: I’ll tell you why. He really liked me and he really liked my family. He liked me, but he really liked my family, so that’s why the article is so good.

BB: Can you tell me how that came about? As a journalist, that’s extremely interesting to me.

DG: Well, he just made contact and the people that actually oversee me for doing a lot of this stuff are my relatives and they knew of him, and they said ‘you gotta do this’. I get directed. I don’t make all these decisions myself. I have a lot of people helping me and a lot of them are family people.

BB: In the article, something that was interesting to me, you talked about Title IX--

(The article explains that Gable has had pointed criticisms of Title IX in the past, because an unintended byproduct of the landmark federal law that required schools to add women’s sports was the shrinking of college wrestling program budgets, while “the scholarship-hogging football teams paid everyone’s bills and were untouchable.”)

DG: I love Title IX, but I didn’t – our sport didn’t take it on correctly. We kind of battled it. We should have joined it and realized that we would get along further if we put our efforts together. We weren’t very smart then. We were working hard, but not smart for Title IX. But I think we got it where we need to. It’s still – it’s always an issue, but it’s a good issue, as long as you don’t get too carried away. See, there’s extreme Title Ninests too, and those you got to kind of overlook and set them aside and see ‘it goes this way and it needs to go this way, but you don’t need to eliminate some people in the process’. You got to figure out how to keep what you got going strong and add to it, and that’s what Title IX is.

BB: Okay, my last question about the article: You’ve had such a unique life and that article made it very clear. But it talked about how you’re still evolving and changing. How would you say you’ve evolved and changed since that article was written two years ago?

DG: I would say that in the last month I have made more progress in my family than I’ve made in a long time, just me and my wife, actually. Just working hard and smart, and making sure that things go really well.

I had actually prepared more questions to ask – and I’d wager that he had plenty more to say – but books needed to be signed, conversation needed to be made and lives needed to be changed by the generosity of wrestling legend Dan Gable.

During his prep and college Wrestling careers, Dan Gable compiled a record of 181-1.

As the University of Iowa’s all-time winningest coach from 1976 to 1997, Gable won 15 NCAA National Wrestling Team Titles while compiling a career record of 355-21-5, He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 National Champions, 106 Big Ten Champions and 12 Olympians, including four gold, one silver and three bronze medalists. The Hawkeyes won 25 consecutive Big Ten championships, 21 under Gable as head coach and four while he was an assistant coach and administrator. He had a winning percentage of .932 and captured nine consecutive (1978-86) NCAA Championships. At the time that equaled the longest streak of national titles won by any school in any sport, and is also held by Yale golf (1905-13) and Southern Cal track (1935-43).

“The Losses of Dan Gable: Wrestling’s most famous winner is taking on one final battle: To save his sport and all he’s ever been” by Wright Thompson 8/21/13
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Dan-Gable/the-losses-dan-gable

Dan Gable is a great guy. Met him years ago in a kids wrestling tournament. I was proud to wear my Asics Dan Gable shoes after that.
A great man and a great example.

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