The Only Ways to Stop Rulon Gardner? Remove the Head or Destroy the Brain
At one time, Rulon Gardner greatest example of badassery was when he defeated the sublimely named Alexander Alexandrovich Karelin, who hadn’t lost in thirteen years and hadn’t been scored upon in six, in the 2000 Sydney Olympics for the Greco-Roman Wrestling gold medal. Because beating this guy clearly wasn’t enough, Rulon started to make his own personal season of I Shouldn’t Be Alive. He survived a motorcycle crash in 2004 without needing facial reconstructive surgery and only lost a toe after a night in the Wyoming wilderness. This year, the indestructible Rulon Gardner has survived a plane crash into an icy lake. Read, and be amazed.
The plane hit the water at 150 miles per hour. Gardner hit his head on the window on impact. The three men quickly got out of their safety belts and abandoned the sinking craft. Gardner said he tried to grab his coat but had not time. The men jumped in the frigid water. It was just past 2:30 in the afternoon. Gardner said he was disoriented from the bump on his head and he sank quickly at first because of the muscle on his massive frame. He began to panic, he said, but his two friends told him to get on his back and paddle and that calmed him down. The trio was able to get their bearings and head out for the nearest shore which was at least a mile and a half away. Gardner said he focused and made one stroke at a time even though, he could not feel his hands. His goal was to get to the beach before nightfall.
After nearly two hours in 44-degree water Gardner and his friends made it to shore. Exhausted, he tried to stand but was so numb nothing worked. When he was able to regain his motor function he started looking for his friends who had barely made it to land several hundred yards away. “I found them,” said Gardner, “They were already in severe levels of hypothermia. Their bodies were shut down; no motor skills. They could not make rational decisions.” He said they looked at him as if he were a ghost. They had thought he had drowned. It was now Gardner’s turn to help his friends. That muscle and mass that almost pulled him under had helped insulate his body from the effects of hypothermia. He was able to think clearly and knew from his previous ordeal in frigid temperatures that the key was to stay focused. Gardner used his body temperature to get his friend’s core temperatures up.
When they became lucid they worked on drying what little clothing they had on before the sun went down. Gardner had shed his shoes during the swim to shore and one of the Brooks brothers took off his shirt. Gardner had a skimpy cotton T-shirt that he tucked his arms into and the Brook’s tore open a long sleeve T-shirt and wore it together. They also built a makeshift wind wall. The men huddled. The brothers took turns laying on each other for warmth but because of Gardner’s size he was only able to rotate his front and back away from the wind. The men kept this up all night. They took turns sleeping a few minutes at a time and continued to check on each other to make sure no one got in trouble. Gardner said they also prayed; together at first and then many silent prayers that they would survive; that they would be found soon.
At 8:30 in the morning the huddled shivering men noticed a few boats on the lake but they were too far away to take notice. It was a bass fishing tournament. “There were only ten boats in the whole tournament,” recalled Gardner. Only three boats came close enough to see and only one boat came near enough for the fishermen on board to take notice of Gardner and his friends. After 18 hours of enduring a plane crash, frigid water, hypothermia, and an overnight temperature of 27 degrees they were finally rescued. Gardner calls it “a miracle and a blessing” they were spotted.
Uh…wow.
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