Bill Smith

Before Bill Smith became a national wrestling legend and Olympic gold medalist, he was a determined student honing his craft on the mats at the University of Northern Iowa. 

Smith attended Iowa State Teachers College, where he launched his wrestling career. He was undefeated in college, was a two-time NCAA champion and won three National AAU titles. 

Following his collegiate success, Smith became the only American to win a freestyle wrestling gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. With that victory, he became the university’s second Olympic gold medalist and its first in wrestling. 

At the time though, Smith said he was much more excited about being an NCAA champion and was most proud of his team winning the national title at the 1950 NCAA championships hosted in the West Gym.

“The Olympic Games were something we didn’t know that much about,” he told Panther Sports Talk in 2013. “Of course, didn’t have TV and a lot of the publicity for it. So that wasn’t a big, exciting thing for me -- getting on the Olympic team and trying to win a gold medal. The biggest thing I wanted to do was make that team so I could take a boat over to Finland. Being an Iowa boy and sitting here in Iowa you don’t get on many of those big ships around the area, so that was going to be exciting for me.”

He added with a laugh that the team ended up flying instead.

Smith earned numerous accolades, including induction into the Iowa High School Wrestling Hall of Fame (1977), the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame (1972) and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame (1978). Thomas Jefferson High School, where he attended, dedicated its new wrestling room to Smith in 2008. 

UNI and the Panther wrestling program honored Smith with a special recognition prior to the Panthers' dual match vs. the University of Oklahoma on Jan. 18, 2013, in the West Gym.

In 2016, Smith donated his Olympic gold medal to UNI and UNI’s official competition mat is named after him.