Biggest loser where is rulon

Reddit Pocket Email Linkedin. Grid View. He had lost pounds. NBC Universal, Inc. Rulon Gardner has left the ranch and is considering a return to competitive wrestling. Email: ttoone desnews. Twitter: tbtoone. Sign up for the newsletter Morning Edition Start your day with the top stories you missed while you were sleeping.

Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email address required. First Name. Last Name. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. The Latest. So what should you do? While Gardner has been working out of the office for a few months, he officially moved his stuff in last night. He bought a house nearby, so his only long commute is up I to the high school. He again cuts a hulking figure, now situated behind a desk in a Dri-FIT, long-sleeved black athletic shirt, gray slacks and black sneakers.

On the desk he has nothing but a binder, a notebook and a red Powerade Zero Sugar. Empty shelves line the wall to his right, but various items from his vast memorabilia collection fill the ones to his left.

He has a torch from the Salt Lake City Olympics, which he got to carry right before his snowmobile accident. He has awards, trophies and plaques, plus T-shirts signed by fellow Olympians. The memories and Sharpie ink fade with time. Simmons can conjure. His family barn burned down when he was a kid. Before the Olympic Trials he was in a motorcycle accident and then dislocated his right wrist punching the bleachers after losing his cool during a pickup basketball game.

Three years later he walked away from a plane crash into Lake Powell with only a minor hip injury and a concussion. Gardner took the tests required to get his insurance license in The branch is independent, meaning they can sell policies through multiple insurance companies. A potential new client comes in for what Rulon calls a one-on-one. Rulon schmoozes, telling stories and jokes before Lydia steers things back toward business. Rulon raves about Lydia, who has years of experience working in the Utah Insurance Department, and he alternately calls her both the brains and the muscle of the operation.

He certainly has no problem using his name to draw people in. Perhaps most importantly, in this whole arrangement, is that the company is accommodating of his schedule. In a normal year, not interrupted by a pandemic, the high school wrestling season runs November to February.

The state tournament is an all-day affair on both Wednesday and Thursday, and JRI has no issue with him logging those hours at the arena. Consider those client recruitment days anyway, with Coach Rulon happily passing along his fliers to a steady stream of coaches, parents, tournament officials and others eager to chat him up between matches. The arena at Utah Valley University is set up with eight wrestling mats in two rows of four. Gardner has a little car and a little traveling companion: Gus.

Hundreds of wrestlers are running around, stretching or sparring to warm up. Gardner is standing along the center line between the rows of mats with an eye on his four guys, who are split into pairs to get loose. One of his lightweights catches an elbow in the wrong spot and blood pours from his nose, seeping into his warm-up shirt and splattering on the crowded mat.

Nobody bats an eye as the wrestler shoves gauze up his nostril and his practice partner sprays the mat down with disinfectant. Officially, Rulon is coaching four kids at States.

Practically speaking, he is coaching more than that. Rulon even gave him his phone number so they could text each other. In some ways, Gardner blends in amid the hundreds of wrestlers and dozens of coaches. Everyone is focused, with the pressure of lifelong individual dreams, team titles and possibly college scholarships on the line. In other ways, Rulon has a presence. They clear the floor and the jumbotron hanging from the ceiling lists which bouts will begin on which mats.

On-deck wrestlers stay on the floor in the warmup area as those with a longer wait time retreat to the bleachers. Each mat is set up the same. Most coaches sit in the chairs, but Rulon stands behind his. He says he liked when his coaches would stand, and he thinks it helps him be more animated. Jack gets out to an early lead, but is pinned despite being ahead in points.

Jack has his head down, arms grabbing the trusses along the side of the metal bleachers. He leans against the metal barricade, right next to the folded-up wall of lower level seats that can extend to cover the floor. He stands alone, essentially in the corner of the gym farthest away from any crowd.

Just an Olympic champion, quietly watching the high-schoolers competing in front of him, chatting only when somebody new sidles up next to him and starts a conversation.

He deserves all the accolades that he has. He remembers coming home to the Wyoming state tournament shortly after he won Olympic gold, when his mere presence was too much of a disruption. He had to leave and go to a nearby mall to accommodate all the people who wanted to talk to him and get autographs. You want me to do a clinic for free? Can I talk to the parents about insurance afterward? You want me to come give a speech? Do you pay other people? He jokes that it took him too long to figure one con that was pulled on him repeatedly: Organizations would make up some award to give him, largely as an excuse to get him to show up for free for an event to which they could sell tickets.

Now he knows better. But despite being the most recognizable face in the gym, one of the most eventful parts of his day is when a tournament official informs him that he has to wear his credential.

But policy is policy. He clips his ID to a carpenter loop on his pants. His two lightweights are both eliminated on Day 1 but the two heavier weights, Talmage Carman and Traycee Norman, win two matches apiece. Both will advance to Day 2, starting with the semifinals in the morning, two wins away from the top spot on the podium.

Rulon is new to the neighborhood, though really his home is more farm community than neighborhood, with horses running through penned-in yards along his drive to the office. Cows roam beyond a fence in his backyard, visible from a driveway that runs alongside his house to a fleet of cars in the back—a Ford Excursion, Ford F, Dodge Durango and the beloved VW Beetle.

He says one day he took a trash can up to the curb, nobody ever came to pick it up, and two days later a neighbor dragged it back in. Olympian of the year; and other accolades.

But Rulon has lived 49 years now, and not all have been as kind as that brief stretch after he became famous overnight, going from total unknown to Leno and Conan guest in a span of 10 days. He holds up his thumb and index finger a couple inches apart. One of his fellow contestants even remarked in a solo confessional to the camera how strange it was not to get a more detailed explanation.

That season featured partners competing in tandem. There were parents with their kids, spouses and siblings. Rulon signed up with his friend Justin Pope, a fellow wrestler who beat Rulon in junior high and long-time friend. At the time, Rulon and his then wife were operating a gym in Logan, Utah, and Justin was an investor. After a first interview in Salt Lake City and a second-round tryout in California, they were all set. Rulon tipped the scale at pounds at the onset of the show, up more than from the pound division in which he competed at the Olympics.

He and Justin were the heaviest team on the ranch. He was a success, in the way success is measured on the show. He outlasted 15 contestants and shed pounds, looking notably trimmer and more fit at in his last official weight check. But behind the scenes, he says it was miserable.

Rulon feels he was treated unfairly. Rulon says it went beyond that—and that behind the scenes it was worse, that the people involved in making the show were manipulative, and gossip among contestants was rampant. There was an incident in New Zealand, when contestants had just returned to the show after a holiday break, and he needed a chiropractor. Someday those details may come out. I got my health back, I got my fitness and I got my life back.

And that was the real reason that I was coming to The Biggest Loser. He played the part. She says she has only positive things to say about her experience being on the show in general and working with Rulon in particular. As a pro boxer, she identified with his wrestler mentality. Castranuova says she thought Rulon would win the whole competition and was shocked when he left.

Bob Harper, a trainer on the show since Season 1, and the face of the program when it relaunched earlier in , is among those whom Rulon thought he was getting close to. He says Bob wanted to stay in touch and keep helping him live healthier. He says Harper told him, I waited my whole career for you. Gardner was also irritated by some of the sniping from fellow contestants.

In , after trimming down on the show, Gardner mounted a comeback attempt for the London Olympics, eight years after medaling in Athens. He says that after his comeback bid fell short—the result of the year-old not being able to make weight on the day of the U. That one stung.

I learned how to count calories. The show has faced plenty of controversy over the years including criticisms of the weight-loss methods and their lasting effects, famed trainer Jillian Michaels giving her team caffeine pills and allegations of contestants taking weight-loss pills and Rulon says former contestants are divided into two camps.

He says some, many of whom gain back considerable weight after they leave the show, feel the experience ruined their lives. We wish him well. He weighed pounds when he competed in the Olympics. Gardner won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the Olympics, and followed that with a bronze medal at the Games. He then announced his retirement from the sport. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs over the weekend for wrestling workouts.

I think, for the most part, I'm ready to go home. And to the U.