Dan Gable, one of the iconic figures in amateur wrestling and coaching, will be 61 years old on Sunday, October 25.
Daniel Mack Gable was born in Waterloo, Iowa in 1948, the only son of Mack and Dorothy Gable. As a child, he was active at the Waterloo YMCA, where he took up swimming and learned wrestling. At Waterloo West High School, Gable wrestled for coaching legend Bob Siddens. As a Wahawk, Gable had a perfect 64-0 record, with three Iowa high school state titles.
In college, Dan Gable wrestled at Iowa State University, competing for another all-time great coach, Harold Nichols. As a Cyclone, Gable was a three-time Big 8 (now Big 12) conference champion, three-time NCAA All-American and two-time NCAA Division I champ (130 pounds in 1968; 137 in 1969). He was 118-1 in college, with that one loss being in his very last match as an ISU wrestler. In the 142-pound finals at the 1970 NCAAs at Northwestern University, Gable was defeated by sophomore Larry Owings of the University of Washington, 13-11, in what is widely considered to be the biggest upset in college wrestling.
After graduating from Iowa State in 1970, Gable concentrated on his freestyle wrestling career, winning a gold medal at the 1971 World Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria... then a second gold at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
In 1972, University of Iowa head wrestling coach Gary Kurdelmeier scored a major coup by hiring Dan Gable away from Iowa State as an assistant coach. In 1977, when Kurdelmeier took an administrative job at Iowa, Gable took the reins of the Hawkeye wrestling program, and built on the successful foundation his predecessor had laid. In 21 years as head coach at Iowa, Gable became the all-time winningest wrestling coach in school history, with a 355-21-5 record, 21 Big Ten championships and 17 NCAA team titles, including a record 9 straight from 1978-86. He retired as head coach at the end of the 1997 season.
Among Dan Gable's honors: named Top Wrestler of the 20th Century by the Gannett News Service; one of the top coaches of the 20th Century by ESPN; Iowa's top sports figure of the past 100 years by Sports Illustrated; one of 100 "Golden Olympians"; and one of three all-time great college coaches (along with Oklahoma State's Edward Gallagher and Iowa State's Harold Nichols) for the NCAA 75th Anniversary of national wrestling championships.
In addition, the wrestling museum in his hometown of Waterloo is named in Gable's honor. He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame & Museum in Stillwater, Oklahoma as a Distinguished Member in 1980.
Resources
UNofficial Fans of Dan Gable Yahoo group
National Wrestling Hall of Fame bio on Dan Gable
Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute & Museum website
Follow College Wrestling Examiner Mark Palmer on Twitter
Comments