Gable’s story plays out in a new documentary titled “Freestyle.” Though it won’t air until Nov. 14 (on HBO Signature Channel), 4,000 Gable cultists have already ordered copies from Direct Cinema of Santa Monica, Calif. The film explores the run-through-walls obsessiveness of a 150-pound wrestler who, at Iowa State University, practiced against a world-class, 450-pound teammate. He was relentlessly single-minded. All that’s absent here is Coach Gable’s fabled murmur to a national champ who’d just thrashed an opponent 10-1: “The guy didn’t look that tired. You didn’t bury him like you could have.”
But there’s something else: in 1964, when he was 15, Gable’s sister Diane was raped and stabbed to death by a neighbor in the family’s Waterloo, Iowa, home. Gable feared the tragedy would shatter his parents’ marriage. He threw himself into wrestling so they could focus on something positive.
The film does love Gable a bit too much. Is it inspirational–or is it troubling–that a high-school boy who’s trying to exorcise a murder mows the grass while running, in a rubber suit, with weights tied to his arms, legs and chest? “Freestyle” doesn’t ask. But the footage of Gable manhandling the world’s best wrestlers makes up for it. Gable was less a technician than an explosive, even reckless attacker whose will to win eclipsed his strength. He may be the only sports figure who ever dominated so completely as both player and coach. And at the 2000 Olympics, his team had better work as hard as he does. It’s a long walk home.
