Bill Smith, who won an Olympic gold medal in wrestling in 1952, has died.
Smith, a Council Bluffs native, died in a Humboldt nursing home Tuesday. He was 89.
A two-time NCAA champion for Iowa State Teachers College — now Northern Iowa — Smith was a recent college graduate working at John Deere in Waterloo when he determined he wanted to try to go to the Helsinki games.
It was a financial burden for him to go. He was married, with one child at home.
BY BUCK TURNBULL: Bill Smith recounts Olympic gold medal run
"I had no business going to the Olympic games and spending a dime of my own money," Smith told the Register in a 2016 interview.