Dan Gable returns to the Olympic games as coach in 1984.

Twelve years after winning a gold medal in Munich, Dan Gable will return to the Olympic Games, but not to compete on the mats. This year the University of Iowa's wrestling coach will lead America's team to Los Angeles, where he'll pit his wrestling skill and knowledge against the rest of the world. It won't be an easy contest. At the World Championships last year, Russia dominated international wrestling, winning seven golds, two silvers, and one bronze medal. They accumulated 56 points of a possible 60.

But Gable and his team are shooting for the top. In a recent interview, Gable described his goals this way: "The Los Angeles Olympic Games August 7-11 are the big thing for me now. I can see the setting. I can see the 7-8,000 people going bananas. I can see the American athletes getting ready to step on the mat against the Russians." But it's impossible to see the finish.

Nonetheless, it's easy to predict that America's wrestlers stand a good chance to strike gold this summer, because Gable knows what it takes to be an Olympic champion. As he explains it, the commitment begins early: "When I was younger, I did the absolute very best I possibly could in any particular area while I was trying it. But once I started wrestling in high school, it became such a commitment that I couldn't concentrate on any other area and feel comfortable."

Gable's commitment paid off. In his high school and collegiate wrestling career he lost only one match—accumulating a total of 202 victories and a winning streak of 182. As his reputation grew, Gable became known as "the" wrestler, the man to beat, the man whose weight class was to be avoided.

In 1971, Gable won the World Championships, contests scheduled for the Olympic off years, where world-class athletes compete against their counterparts from nations around the globe. The Russians, long-time denominators in world wrestling, fully expected to beat Gable at the 1971 Championships. But Gable destroyed their expectations and planned victory celebrations, easily beating all six of his international opponents. For the next year Russian leaders were to scour the U.S.S.R. in the hope of finding a wrestler who could beat Gable in the upcoming Munich Games.

While the Russians prepared for Gable, Gable prepared for them. With only a few months before the Games, his chronic knee injuries—a hazard among serious wrestlers—became critical. One day while Gable and heavyweight (450-pound) Chris Taylor were working out together, Taylor lost his balance and fell across Gable's legs, tearing ligaments and cartilage in the smaller man's left knee. Gable had a choice. He could either risk the surgery that would shorten his training time for the Games, or he could bet on his chances without surgery.

Gable opted for the latter alternative, a risk that ultimately paid off. Combining grueling workouts with careful self-therapy, he was able to strengthen his crippled knee so that it neither hurt, weakened, nor became injured during Olympic competition. Gable won the gold with little serious challenge from any wrestler, including the Russian opponent Gable says "couldn't handle my style."

Having achieved the last of his personal wrestling goals, Gable was ready for a career that would enable him to pass his skills on to others. The University of Iowa recruited the Iowa State graduate vigorously, and Gable accepted his first and thus far only coaching job. It's been a pretty brilliant career.

As a coach, Gable has never believed in a nine-to-five schedule. Whenever his men need him, he's ready to help. "If it's the middle of the night, if it's bright and early in the morning, if it's in the afternoon, it's whatever the situation is, no matter when it is. If you're looking for effort, your program will reflect it," he says. Iowa's program has become nearly invincible under the firm hand of Gable's dedication. He can point to 31 All-Americans, four Olympians (who qualified for the boycotted games in 1980), and three Pan American champions in 1983, as well as a team that came back to capture an unprecedented seventh consecutive national championship in the NCAA tournament in 1984.

Gable has been so successful that some U.S. wrestling coaches openly despair and aim only as high as second place. Other athletic administrations try more aggressive tactics, tempting Iowa's coach with promises of reportedly enormous salaries and long-term collegiate contracts. But Gable hasn't made any moves to explore greener pastures elsewhere.

For the past year, he's been coaching America's potential Olympians in one of the nation's finest facilities, the wrestling room in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Many of the athletes are well known to Gable. He either coached them for the 1980 Olympics or as members of the University of Iowa wrestling team. In all, thirteen past and present Iowa wrestlers are among the three dozen hopefuls for the 1984 Games, including three UI wrestlers who qualified for the 1980 team. From these ranks, Gable will choose 20 men to represent the U.S. in Los Angeles, where any one competitor has the potential of gaining almost instantaneous fame.

Gable's personal exploits are already legendary, and the coach has made sure that the UI will stand long and proud in the world's record books, too. But, right now, he's facing a formidable task.

Even though Gable has gathered the best wrestlers in America and even though they've been working out in one of the best wrestling facilities in the world, Gable's toughest opponents—the Russians—have better support. Not only do the Soviets assign one coach for every three wrestlers training for the Olympics, but the athletes themselves have been preparing for this event for most of their lives. "Their system," says Gable, "channels the right people with the right body build into all the right areas as they're growing up. Because their wrestlers are hand-picked for their physical characteristics as kids, they don't have to work on building overall strength. They can concentrate on just those muscles necessary for the actual techniques and strategies of the sport."

To top it off, Russia's child athletes are enrolled in sports schools, where they spend most of their time preparing to bring glory to their country and substantial advantage to themselves. If they win in international competitions, Gable says, the government will reward them generously for life. However, if they don't bring prestige to the country, they become losers for life. Gable notes that with such intense pressure it's not surprising so many Russian athletes win gold medals.

But Gable says he knows how to crack the Soviet wrestlers' skills. He plans to exploit their one weakness, the fact that Russian wrestlers are usually inflexible. Because ten coaches train thirty men prior to the Games and then relinquish their leadership to one head coach when the team leaves for the Olympics, the wrestlers' techniques must be rigidly standardized. American wrestlers know in advance what to expect.

"If you've seen one Russian wrestle, you've seen them all," Gable says. Unfortunately, he admits, the Soviets are all so good at their sport that they're hard to stop. The trick is to "throw them off program—kind of like a computer going haywire. Then," says Gable, "you can really have an opportunity to beat them. They're not able to bounce back very well."

Gable works hard to turn his wrestlers' initial disadvantages to good use. Through strenuous workouts designed to build bodies, Gable also instills a mental toughness to give his men an edge over all opponents. In asking his athletes to force themselves to endure more and more strenuous workouts, he encourages each individual to find and extend his limit, to find new and different ways to compensate for any weakness, and to become a creative and aggressive competitor. "Aggressiveness and offensive maneuvering are the only means to achieve consistent victory," Gable claims.

Formidable as both a wrestler and a coach, Gable has had a mystique grow up around him that puts enormous pressure on the men he trains. The public expects his team to win. But Gable doesn't shirk from the pressure and doesn't let his team escape it either. "Wrestling is a sport that demands the athlete's total control of his own and his opponent's muscles. It requires a fighting attitude that stays fierce regardless of the opponent you face," Gable asserts. "If a man is an Olympic wrestler and believes anything less than that, he shouldn't be on the squad."

It's with that kind of attitude that Gable's Olympians will go to Los Angeles this summer. They expect to strike gold.