Rulon Gardner sat against a tree trapped in a Wyoming forest, his wet clothes frozen so stiff he could hardly stand or sit as temperatures dipped to 25-below. Gardner recalled a vivid image of a frozen Jack Nicholson in the movie "The Shining," disturbed that's how his family might discover his body -- completely frozen.

	Rulon Gardner's remarkable upset ranks as one of the top moments from the Sydney Games.

A series of bad decisions nearly killed him a year ago on Valentine's Day. They still might keep him from defending his Olympic title. While he was away from competition, American Dremel Byers won the 2002 World Championships. Because each qualifying country can only send one athlete to the Olympics, Gardner might not go in 2004.

His low point came after an almost two-year high in his career. The amazing run started by earning a spot at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. There he shocked the world by beating undefeated Alexander Karelin to take the Greco-Roman gold medal for the United States. Then in 2001, Gardner won the world wrestling championships.

The youngest of nine children, Gardner grew up on a dairy farm in Afton, Wyo. He often wrestled his brother, Reynold, to see who would have to do extra chores. Although Gardner wrestled in organized camps from age 6, it took him until his senior year to fulfill his goal of making his high school team.

He had to work hard just to get to that level, but Gardner from a young age had a belief that little could stop him. That attitude brought about the "Miracle on the Mat" in Sydney, but it also had him fighting for his life on Feb. 14, 2002.

About the Titan Games

Rulon Gardner will be competing in the Titan Games on Thursday-Saturday. He'll be competing to be the ultimate Titan in wrestling as the United States Olympic Committee focuses on the road to Athens. What it is: The Titan Games format -- with four platforms with competition continuously happening on at least three -- is the first of its kind. It will be staged over three finals-only sessions. Team and individual winners will be named by sport and weight classification, with the honor of "Ultimate Titan" up for grabs. Where: San Jose, Calif. Sports: Boxing, fencing, shot put, wrestling, weightlifting, judo, taekwondo and karate. Countries participating: United States, Mexico, Vietnam, Cuba, Russia, Puerto Rico, China and Hungary. Web site: Titan Games On TV: ESPN2 3-4 p.m. March 29 4:30-5:30 p.m. March 30

On that day, Gardner and friends Trent Simkins and Danny Schwab decided to spend the afternoon snowmobiling in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Schwab, who had the survival gear and first-aid kit, left to attend his daughter's basketball game.

Gardner rode down into a gully created by springtime drainage that flows into the Salt River. He could see Simkins on a nearby hill but after a while lost track of him.

"Maybe he's down in the gully," Gardner thought, "there's these tracks."

But the tracks were his own. The gully narrowed until it became too difficult to turn around. But he still wasn't worried. "I'll just ride the ridge back to the top. No problem. Just keep going," Gardner told himself.

But he couldn't keep going because two water holes blocked his path. He decided to try to drive across. Just as he started climbing out on the other side, the rear-end of his sled bogged. He was really only halfway across.

Gardner jumped off the sled. His choice would be crucial. He could walk up the hill through five feet of snow, with no base to it. He figured it would take three or four hours to find Simkins, who would then have to come back with him to retrieve the sled. That seemed time consuming, but he also knew how dangerous wet clothes were in a Wyoming winter. "If I get in the water, I need to hurry up and get out of here," he said to himself.

Gardner decided not to walk. He stepped back into the thigh-high water, picked up the 600-pound snowmobile and pushed it out. This time, he tried to drive around the water hole, but the sled slid under the water. Once again, he dragged the heavy sled to safety. A rescue party member would later fall into the same water hole -- but it would take four men to free the sled.

Wet now, Gardner knew he needed to find a way out quickly. He stripped off his gloves, put on a dry pair and drove on. He could see a dropoff ahead. In the growing darkness, he couldn't tell how far it went, but he could see ground. He had no choice. He couldn't turn back -- surely, he thought, there is a way out ahead. He went over the edge only to realize it was a 150-foot cliff -- almost straight down. There was no stopping now. He struggled to keep his left foot on the hill as an anchor but the momentum propelled him down.

Safely down in the gully, he looked around. Somebody had been there before. He couldn't see how they had gotten out, but he was sure there was a way. He decided to follow the riverbed, which had a series of cascades. After five miles, the area narrowed so he could no longer ride alongside the river.

So, Gardner dropped into the river. The rocks on the bottom beat up his sled. He went only 100 yards when his snowmobile stuck. He decided to hike out. He kept digging and digging in the deep snow, trying to climb the hill. He wasn't getting anywhere, and now his second pair of gloves was wet, too.

Climbing out wasn't an option. Back to the sled. As he pulled on the front of the sled, his hands slipped -- plunging him backward into the river. Now his front and back were completely wet. He'd managed to free the sled, though, so he jumped on. He only gained another 50 yards when it became stuck under a chunk of ice. That was it.

He left the sled and walked about 50 yards when he spotted a grove of trees another 15 yards away. Gardner took shelter there in the darkness trying to find a dry spot out of the wind.

Don't fall asleep
He assessed himself. All he had been wearing that afternoon was a T-shirt, a sweatshirt and a fleece top. Not much, and it was all wet.

He took off his left sock but struggled to replace his boot. It was already frozen. He pulled the lining out and put it on over his sockless foot and then put the boot on. He started to do the same thing to his right boot but by then his hands were so cold that his fingers weren't working properly. So the wet sock stayed on his right foot. His clothing crackled with ice and whenever he moved his toes, the ice inside his boot cut into his feet.

Afraid to sit still, he began standing up and sitting down to stay awake. He thawed out his sweatshirt using his breath to reach inside his bibs for his cell phone. There was no reception in the canyon, but the phone did tell him the time. He thought surely eight hours had gone by, making it about 4 a.m. Instead it was only around 12:30 a.m. "You're in trouble," he thought then. "You need to wake yourself up."

The temperature had dropped to 25-degrees below zero. As hypothermia set in, he felt a false sensation of warmth, imagining himself under a warm shower. "Oh, this feels so good," he thought. Realizing the danger, he used the feeling as a trigger to wake himself up. He began to say his personal mantra to motivate himself.

"You need to wake up you piece of crap. You're lazy. You're a piece of crap. Come on stick with this. Let's go."

He positioned himself against a tree at an angle because his legs fell asleep whenever he sat down. Plus, the position was so uncomfortable that if he started to fall asleep the pain would wake him.

	“	My life's floating away before my eyes. I'm getting ready to die. ”
		— Rulon Gardner

Meanwhile, a rescue party led by Schwab set out. They followed his tracks to the cliff where he dropped off and said, "This guy's crazy. There's no way we can follow him."

Gardner was only about 200 yards away. He could hear the pipes on one of the snowmobiles. He whistled to them, but the sound didn't rise out of the gully. While trying to decide whether to go after them, he heard the machines stop.

One of the snowmobiles was stuck in the same spot near the water holes he'd encountered. They were nearby for almost an hour, but Gardner thought they were gone.

Not long after, he began to hallucinate. He had a vision of his middle brother Ronald, who had died of aplastic anemia, alongside Jesus and God. Not wanting to die, he gave a nod as if to say hi, afraid to interact with them more. "I don't want to die," he said to himself. "I want to live."

Feeling that the choice was no longer in his hands, he asked that he could live. Then he woke up.

Throughout the night, crazy ideas popped into his head because of the hypothermia. At one point, he thought, "I need to take my sweatshirt off because it's making me cold." At 4:30 a.m., he thought about starting to walk but told himself keep it together -- just make it until dawn.

At 6:30 a.m., he walked back down to the river. He took a sip of water. He found a rock in the frozen river and sat down on it. He watched as the stars began to wink out as dawn approached. "My life's floating away before my eyes," he thought. "I'm getting ready to die."

'Uh-oh'
Then he heard the search plane. He waved one arm. As the plane passed over a second time, he waved both arms, and the pilot dipped the wings in recognition. The plane flew over one last time and threw a coat out.

Gardner tried to reach the coat, which had landed in some trees, but the snow was so deep it took him a half an hour to get close. By then, he had little energy to continue searching. He fell asleep. It was almost three hours before LifeFlight arrived.

	Rulon Gardner often does motivational speaking for corporations as well as wrestling clinics.

As soon as he saw the helicopter, he thought, "Uh-oh." When LifeFlight comes in everyone knows what's going on. He knew his life was in extreme danger, but yet he didn't want everyone to think he'd been an idiot.

When they landed, he crawled about 40 yards to the helicopter. They pushed and pulled to get his heavyweight frame inside. His first temperature check registered at 80 degrees. Usually, a person becomes unconscious at 82 degrees.

They soon had him at the hospital where it took five people to remove his left boot. His right one would have to be cut off. They took one look at his feet and flew him to another hospital in Idaho Falls.

In all, Gardner was in the cold for almost 18 hours. He later found out that LifeFlight had been delayed because of commitments to athlete safety at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. The irony isn't lost on Gardner.

"So during that time, the thing that helped me get all the notoriety, is the thing that almost cost me my life."

In Idaho Falls, the fight to keep his feet began as he met plastic surgeon Timothy Thurman, who was on call on Feb. 15, 2002.

"When he first came in, his toes were like ice cubes," Thurman said.

They raised his temperature to a more stable 95 degrees and began treating his frozen feet.

"Initially, I thought he might lose a portion of his feet and all 10 toes," Thurman said. "Frostbite's kind of a bad thing."

But when Gardner heard the prognosis he said, "I don't think so. I'll see you tomorrow doc."

Fighting for balance
Frostbite is treated like a deep burn. The skin blisters and needs debrided. It needs treatment to prevent bacterial infections. It's also quite painful. But Gardner refused more than a couple of painkillers throughout the next four days.

"You hear a lot of athletes who get addicted to them and stuff," Gardner said.

Although his family and girlfriend Tausha Simkins, former Miss Rodeo Wyoming, surrounded him to support him, Gardner pushed them all away. He didn't feel he could deal with any distractions.

In the end, he only lost one toe. Because of Gardner's career, Thurman treated him aggressively taking his third toe on his right foot once they knew the tissue was dead.

"He wanted to get back into things and we knew to a certain extent that his toes are his career or part of his career," Thurman said.

	Rulon Gardner clowns around with Andrew Romero, 3, of San Jose, Calif., during a wrestling clinic at Independence High School.

Gardner underwent at least four surgeries to remove dead tissue and undergo skin grafts. Thurman put pins in his toes to temporarily tack them to his feet, keeping them from moving and damaging the tissue. Gardner left the hospital after about three months. Then the rehabilitation process began -- mentally and physically.

At first, he was just happy to be alive. Then, he was happy to have kept his feet. Now, he's starting to think about the next Olympics.

"To have my feet and be alive is so important," Gardner says a year later. "Every day it's a battle to make sure a person is 100 percent ready for life and for the challenge."

He started wrestling again but is careful not to push himself too fast.

"Now, this last year it's been rebuilding every day getting better and bigger and stronger trying to rebuild not just my wrestling life, but also my personal life of getting myself back on task and getting to the point where I feel I'm adequate as a wrestler but then also as a person."

At first, he had to wear extra-large shoes to keep them from rubbing his new skin. He was concerned about fellow wrestlers stepping on his tender feet. But those fears are in the past. His main struggle is to stretch the ligaments and increase mobility in his toes.

"I think every day it does get better," Gardner said. "I guess you never realize how much work your toes do. Just imagine if you could never bend your toes and every step you took felt like they were going to snap right off. That's what I have every day."

But his toes should keep improving.

"I would expect him to get increasing mobility in his toes as time goes on," Thurman said.

	“	To have my feet and be alive is so important. Every day it's a battle to make sure a person is 100 percent ready for life and for the challenge. ”
		— Rulon Gardner

Gardner lives in Colorado Springs, Colo., to be near the Olympic training center. Since last fall, he's wrestled in three competitions and one exhibition winning every match but one. He lost his first match last weekend at the Dave Schultz Memorial International to Cuban Mijain Lopez, whom he'll face again Friday in the Titan Games.

Despite the career challenges, he's past some of the personal difficulties. He and Tausha are back together.

"As a person it makes you really step back and realize what you have. In that process I really stepped back. I needed an area to find out what was important for my life."

Besides wrestling, Gardner works as a motivational speaker and teaches at wrestling clinics. He worked with the USO in Japan and Korea. He's finishing a book about his life with author Bob Schaller. Someday, he hopes to teach high school and put his college degree -- hard-earned for a boy with a learning disability -- to work.

"One of my goals is to go back home and help out youth wrestling and build a community rec center and promote physical fitness and physical education."

But for now, Athens is the goal.

"Wrestling's been such a huge part of who I am ... There's no guarantee of how I'll do, but I'm lucky to be alive. And to wrestle. If I never win a gold medal or if I do win an Olympic gold medal, I'll be happy. As long as I do the best I can every day."

He doesn't see any physical limitations.

"Lord willing, I don't think there should be any reason why I can't make the Olympic team again. I've got to beat a world champion to make it again, but that's where hard work and determination comes in."

He hasn't forgotten the people who rescued him, either. He says it weighs heavy on his heart that others had to risk their lives for him. He bought two satellite phones for the search team, which had none before, and threw his rescuers a party.

"You live once," Gardner said. "We all make mistakes. Some people make bigger mistakes than others. I've learned through experiences."

Although he'll be focused on the Titan Games today, he'll be thinking about where he was a year ago. He even intends to return sometime in the next couple of weeks to the site of his bitterly cold night. This time, he'll have friends along, survival gear and his own satellite phone.

"Closure. If you start something in life you need to finish it," Gardner said. "We're actually going back up in there and follow the trail out. And I'm going to make it out of there alive. You're probably going to think I'm crazy. But you live once."

Cynthia Faulkner is the Olympics editor at ESPN.com.