US Olympic Star Cheated Death Four Times Including Surviving Plane Crash

Winning Olympic gold medal would surely be the most impressive feat of someone's life but somehow Rulon Gardner's best achievement is just staying alive.

A Greco-Roman wrestler, Gardner won gold at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney - knocking off three-time Olympic gold medalist Aleksandr Karelin and ending his 13-year unbeaten run in the process.

The victory was dubbed "the miracle on the mat".

Gardner, from Afton, Wyoming in the United States, later added a bronze medal to his collection four years later in Athens.

He also became world champion in 2001 and beat Hidehiko Yoshida in a judo vs wrestling match for Pride Fighting Championships back in 2004.

Gardner, who also featured on the Biggest Loser Show after an excessive weight gain, saw his wins celebrated through an induction in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2010.

He has worked as a motivational speaker and his remarkable tales extend beyond his wrestling exploits.

That's because Gardner cheated death on four separate occasions having survived some remarkable accidents and situations.

Gardner won Olympic gold in 2000. Image: Getty

As a youngster in school, he impaled himself with an arrow into his abdomen during a class show and tell - narrowly avoiding puncturing a vital organ.

and years later, lost the middle toe on his right foot to frostbite when he was stranded in the wilderness for 18 hours after falling into the Salt River with his snowmobile and experiencing hypothermia.

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Gardner decided to keep his former toe in formaldehyde in a jar in his fridge to remember the situation.

Two years on and he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in Colorado Springs but again lived to tell the tale and suffered no serious injuries despite flying over the handlebars.

But that's not all as in 2007, Gardner again came close to dying. He was involved in a plane crash in Utah when the single-engine aircraft he was in with the brother pilot pairing of Randy Brooks and brother Leslie.

When looking at a houseboat, the plane took a sudden dive and dropped into the water.

Gardner had four separate incidents where he could have died. Image: Getty

The passengers, including Gardner, evacuated the plane and ended up swimming in 44-degree water for an hour before reaching shore spending the night without fire or proper shelter.

They were rescued by a fishermen and miraculously did not have any life-threatening injuries, with Steven Luckesen, a district ranger at Glen Canyon, National Recreation Area, describing their recovery as "pretty amazing'.

He also added, that, "If these guys were a cat with nine lives, they just used up three of them".

Kevin Schneider, a spokesman for the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, said the trio were "very fortunate to be alive" and that they "had three things that could have killed them".

Reflecting on another crazy brush with death, Gardner told CNN: "I think I'm really lucky after everything I have been through.

"The plane went from 150 mph to none in about 2 seconds.

"Within about a half a second is when we knew that things went from a beautiful day, a beautiful afternoon, all the way to a pretty bad situation."

As well as working as the head wrestling coach at Herriman High School in Utah, Gardner, rather aptly, works as an insurance agent at JRI Insurance in Payson.