Gardner: Mat&#39;s all, folks: Champ retires with a bronze
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Shortly after he had been declared the winner in his bout against Iran&#39;s Sajad Barzi last night, Rulon Gardner returned to the mat at the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, sat down, and quietly removed his shoes.
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Olympic wrestling champion Rulon Gardner lost a toe to frostbite after being stranded in the wilderness, impaled himself with an arrow and was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. In his latest escape from death, he survived a plane crash over the weekend into the aptly named Good Hope Bay on the Utah-Arizona border.
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Maybe this is the end of an era. Dawn Staley has called it quits as an Olympic player. Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes can&#39;t imagine playing without her.
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They called it the &quot;Miracle on the mat.&quot; A super heavyweight became a media darling. America learned that wrestling wasn&#39;t always about turnbuckles and elbow drops.
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Noah Ngeny, who upset Hicham El Guerrouj to win the 1,500-meter gold medal at the Sydney Olympics, retired because of recurring back and pelvis problems from 2001 car accident in Kenya.
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US heavyweight Rulon Gardner lost his Olympic title Wednesday after being beaten in the semi-final stage of the 120kg Greco-Roman wrestling event by Georgiy Tsurtsumia of Kazakhstan.
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Paul Hamm&#39;s Olympic gold medal for the all-around championship he won last month officially rests with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
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Athens, Greece -- Rulon Gardner unlaced his size 13 shoes, yanked them off and placed them on the mat. The big galoot, as friendly and unassuming as any Olympian could be, recalled how he would sit on the floor as a kid and pull on his sneakers.
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ATHENS, Greece - Rulon Gardner was in another Olympic wrestling upset - his own. One of the biggest stars of the 2000 Summer Games, Gardner was thrown to the mat in overtime Wednesday by Kazakhstan's Georgi Tsurtsumia and lost 4-1 in his Greco-Roman semifinal match...
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How many times can Rulon Gardner cheat death? In 2002, the former Olympic wrestling champion survived a snowmobile stranding and lost a toe to frostbite. In 2004, after his motorcycle was hit by a car, he walked away with cuts and bruises.
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Jason Estrada had the perfect opponent last night. An inexperienced one. The Pan Am Games gold medalist had not fought in two months because of a thumb injury and a case of plantar fasciitis that curtailed both his training and his aerobic workouts, and that layoff had his coaches concerned. Unable to run until recently, the Providence, R.I., ...
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U.S. heavyweight wrestler Rulon Gardner,  the defending Olympic champion who was nearly killed in a  snowmobile accident, literally slapped his opponent down on his  way to the semi-final Tuesday.
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WHILE ONE-HALF of ten- nis&#39;s greatest rivalry has retired (Pete Sampras), the other half is still going strong. Andre Agassi and the rest of his professional tennis crew rolled into Washington, DC, this past week for the annual Legg Mason Tennis Classic.
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ATHENS, Greece  -- Rulon Gardner won two pool matches Tuesday, his first in the Olympics since his monumental gold-medal upset of Russia's supposedly unbeatable Alexander Karelin in Sydney, to move within one victory of reaching the Greco-Roman wrestling semifinals at 264 1/2 pounds (120kg).
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Rulon Gardner defeated Iran&#39;s Sajad Barzi, 3-0, in overtime in the 264-pound division of Greco-Roman wrestling at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall.
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Like Michael Jordan , and just about any boxer who has put on gloves, Martina Navratilova wasn't done after her first retirement. That ended, years ago, when the call came to entice her back into doubles, and she realized her skills would still afford her a high level of play.
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It was, as is often the case with this old coach, couched in a joke. Said UNLV coach John Robinson on Tuesday, two days after announcing he will retire at the end of the season: &quot;I think some young players are saying &#39;Uh-oh.