Bob Molle

Athlete (1993)

Football & Wrestling

Bob Molle was born in Saskatoon on Sept. 23, 1962, and grew up in the Evan Hardy Collegiate area where he experienced his first success in wrestling and football.

As a wrestler, he won the Saskatoon heavyweight championship and then the provincial title before enrolling at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

He was the Canadian heavyweight champion four times, 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1987. He was bronze medallist at the Pan-American Games and a fifth-place finisher at the world championships at Kiev, Russia, in 1983. He was a bronze medallist at the World Cup in Toledo, Ohio in 1984.

Bob won the silver medal in the heavyweight division at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. Twenty-one days before he flew to the Olympics, he underwent back surgery in Vancouver. After getting to Los Angeles, he was a day-to-day basis and won his first four matches to reach the final.

In 1986, Bob became the first heavyweight wrestler in history to win four straight American National Amateur Intercollegiate titles. He was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Canadian Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.

In football, he played on four Evan Hardy teams, winning the provincial in 1980, and played one year with Saskatoon Hilltops before going to Simon Fraser. After becoming the first Canadian to win All-American honors as an offensive lineman at SFU, he was a first-round draft pick of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1985. He played on the 1988 Bombers, who won the Grey Cup, and was captain of the 1990 Bombers, who beat Edmonton in the Grey Cup final.

He remains active in wrestling, having been named Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union Wrestling coach of the year in 1992 and 1993.