Blayne Sucks

For those of you who haven’t heard of Rulon Gardner, he’s the survivor of truly a most unreal combination of incidents. First, let’s talk about the good. He’s an Olympic Gold Medalist from Wyoming. He was certainly not the favorite to win Gold, but pulled off a stunning upset in 2000. I remember hearing about it and thinking it was pretty sweet to see. Four years later, he won the Bronze medal and retired. All in all, an impressive career.

Now, let’s get on to the strange. This dude has survived some messed up stuff. First, when he was very young he survived an arrow injury that very nearly punctured vital organs. Then he got lost on a snow mobile trek into the wilderness and ended up being stranded over night in freezing weather. This resulted in the loss of a toe on his foot. Actually, it’s a lot worse than that. Doctors said that if he was anything other than a giant of a man with Olympic sized muscles to produce heat and keep his core body temperature up then he would have died. He spent the whole night gritting his teeth through the pain of trying to stand up on nearly frozen solid feet. After that, he was involved in a motorcycle accident where he was thrown off his bike and survived with no serious injuries.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. He’s recently survived a plane crash, from which he swam in 44 degree weather for an hour or so to get to shore where he spent another night out in the freezing cold. Naturally, he survived. Is this man lucky or unlucky? Either way, it’s unbelievable. I am starting to get this feeling about him. It’s kinda like Steve Irwin at this point. You just knew he wasn’t going to die of natural causes. I guess we’ll see what happens next.