AFTON, Wyo. -- Piles of mail are stacked in the modest farm house of Rulon Gardner's parents. Letters are addressed to "The Wrestling Hunk" and "The Most Wonderful Wrestler in the World."

It's been like this since Gardner pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history.

Before that 1-0 victory in Sydney ended the 13-year winning streak of Russia's Alexander Karelin, the chief claim to fame in this farming town was an arch of elkhorns over Washington Street, billed as the world's largest.

Now, tour buses stop and people take pictures of the storefronts and signs that read "Rule On Rulon" and "Rulon Wins Gold."

Gardner's return is eagerly awaited among the 1,500 residents. Children wear gray T-shirts with his picture on the front and the words "Miracle on the Mat" on the back. Thousands are expected for his homecoming Thursday.

"This is probably the greatest thing in the valley since the first settlers survived early winters," Mayor Jerry Hansen said.

Yet even while he's a hero, he's still the same old Rulon to family and friends.

"He's humble. It's not an act," his 35-year-old brother, Russ Gardner, said. "He'd give you the shirt off his back."

Rulon Ellis Gardner was born the youngest of nine children on Aug. 16, 1971. He grew up in a Mormon household that believed in eating meals together, being there for one another and working hard. His parents, Reed and Virginia, saw their children graduate from universities.

Chores such as feeding calves awaited Rulon even when he got home late from a sporting event.

The two youngest brothers, Reynold and Rulon, eventually became their father's primary milkers. Only a year apart in age, sibling rivalry sometimes got the best of them.

"If they'd be milking and each had 13 cows to milk, they'd fight and argue for 20 minutes about who'd milk the last cow," Reed Gardner said. "They'd wrangle and wrestle. I guess that's what made (Rulon) tough."

Agriculture drives the small-town economy, but making a living at it in the harsh Star Valley is difficult. Rocks fill the ground cultivated for crops and temperatures during the winter can fall to 30 below zero, taking a toll on livestock.

For a long time, the Gardner boys helped haul bales and pick rocks by hand. Virginia Gardner remembered an older Rulon carrying newborn calves in from the cold or damp on his shoulders.

School may have presented a greater challenge for Rulon, who had a learning disability. An aide in the classroom helped him with his reading. Virginia, getting off a late nursing shift, would read chapters to him when he was studying.

"If he could hear the questions on a test, he could answer them," said Virginia, 64. "He just couldn't read fast enough to absorb it on his own."

He was a chubby kid who didn't stand out to his early coaches.

"If Rulon lost, he shrugged it off. I never thought he was that serious, but that was in junior high school," said Barry Bayorek, his wrestling coach at the time. "But if you're asking me did I see the Olympics in his future, no way."

Gardner took some teasing growing up, both for his learning disability and his weight, but he came into his own his junior and senior year, excelling in track, football and wrestling and gaining respect.

"I always felt that sports kept him in high school and was his ticket into college," said Janis Reeves, his ninth-grade English teacher.

His coaches tell of how Rulon and Reynold wrestled for the final varsity spot during Rulon's junior year.

"He struggled with what he should do. He knew he could beat Reynold, but he knew it was his brother's last year," former coach Bill Hoopes said. "He let his older brother win, but he made him earn every bit of it."

The team went on that year to win the state title and Reynold himself won a state championship. It took third at the state Rulon's senior year, when he finished with just one loss and an individual state title.

"He was never mean, but he knew how to inflict pain," Rulon's longtime high school wrestling coach Kevin Kennington said.

Success on the mat continued at Ricks College and the University of Nebraska. It was while at Ricks that he told his mother of his Olympic dream -- to win a gold medal.

"He said he wanted to be in Atlanta (in 1996) and I said, 'C'mon, that's a little soon,"' she said.

His Olympic quest that year was cut short by 22 seconds -- the amount of time by which Gardner missed weigh-ins.

Since then, he's married and trained hard, first in Arizona, where he met his wife, Stacy, then in Colorado Springs, where the couple have a home. Stacy gave up her teaching career after he won the Sydney Olympics.

The rest of his family also made sacrifices, raising money at fair booths and leaving behind crops to be in Australia to cheer him on. It was the first vacation the Gardners ever took as a family.

They watched as he worked his way to the gold-medal match and the stunning victory over Karelin, considered the world's greatest wrestler.

"We all had faith in him. We all believed he could do it," Russell Gardner said. "Whether he won the gold medal or no medal, he did it. He still made it to the Olympics and we were proud of him."

Since winning the gold, Russell Gardner said his brother has turned down a million-dollar deal with the World Wrestling Federation and a motorcycle endorsement offer.

"He's being very careful in how he markets himself," he said.

Now, the gold-medal wrestler is thinking about buying two acres of the family farm and settling near Afton.

"It's so nice to see he's still just Rulon," his mother said.