Olympic Gold Medalist Gardner Survives Plane Crash

Olympic wrestling champion Rulon Gardner and two other men survived a plane crash in Lake Powell, then swam to shore in 44-degree water and huddled together overnight as the temperature fell below freezing.

Sunday morning, a fisherman found all three men, alive.

"I knew there was a lot of blessings to get to the shore," Gardner told KSL-TV. "You know, it was so surreal. It was like this isn't happening to me."

The ex-Olympian was a passenger in the Cirrus SR 22, along with pilot Randy Brooks and his brother, Leslie Brooks, when it crashed Saturday near the border of Arizona and Utah. All three men escaped the plane before it sank.

"I just got too close to the water and went in. There was nothing wrong with the airplane or anything. I just screwed up," Randy Brooks, 58, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The next morning a fisherman took them to Bullfrog Marina where they were examined by National Park Service medics.

"Miraculously the three sustained no life-threatening injuries, mainly suffering from hypothermia injuries to their feet," Garfield County authorities said in a statement.

Their survival is "pretty amazing," said Steven Luckesen, a district ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

It takes only about 30 minutes for someone swimming in 44-degree water to start suffering the effects of hypothermia, he said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation.

This is not the first time Gardner has had a brush with death. In 2002, he became stranded while snowmobiling in Wyoming and lost one of his toes to frostbite. In 2004, he was struck by an automobile while riding a motorcycle.

Sources: http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=2779776

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/news?slug=ap-gardner-planecrash&prov=ap&type=lgns