Steven Holcomb's Long Track to Gold

There's much drama in bobsled. It's a tough sport that attracts tough people. Some guys come in all macho, with a superior "I'm gonna win" attitude, full of excuses when they don't win; they're gone by the end of their first season.

Steven Holcomb is not like that. Soft-spoken and calm, his very strong and quiet macho comes out only on the ice of the bobsled track. But if it wasn't for his tough and unforgiving father, Holcomb would never have stuck it out to win Olympic gold.

It was Steve who pushed his son hard, who wouldn't let him quit, whose obsession with winning an Olympic medal drove his son's life since Steven was a teen.

Steven started out as a ski racer. That's an expensive and demanding sport, but to his dad, no sacrifice was too great. In Utah, he drove his son to Park City from Salt Lake City for on-snow training; a 90-mile round-trip drive. He lived in the barely-finished upstairs of an old warehouse in a seedy part of Salt Lake so that the money he saved on housing could go for his son's training and racing.

But then young Steven suddenly decided to quit ski racing and become a bobsledder. His father went along with the decision, but this time he would not allow any slacking. He once yelled at his son who came home from bobsled practice early because it was raining, "If you're not going to do this with everything you've got, then stop! Quit and go back to school!"

The father's dedication paid off when Steven, who is a fast and powerful athlete in every sport he tries, was chosen as a brakeman (push athlete) for the sled of Todd Hays, who was then America's top bobsled driver. Soon, Steven was traveling around the world on the World Cup circuit, helping to push former MMA fighter Hays into a dominating position in the sport.

By this time, Steven and his father were living in a small house literally across the street from ski area Park City Mountain Resort, just seven miles from the 2002 Olympic bobsled track. Steven practiced nearly every day.

Then came a series of disasters that would have thrown nearly anyone else. First, just a few weeks before the 2002 Olympics, Hays replaced Steven with another brakeman. Steven ended up watching the Olympics on television, seven miles away. Inside, anger and determination began to seethe.

When the season started again, Steven was no longer available as a brakeman. He was now going to be a driver. His destiny would be in his own hands.

At first, it was hard. There were crashes. But slowly, Steven's times improved. And then the next blow fell. Steven began losing his vision. He had a degenerative eye disease. He had to drive his sled mostly by feel, because he couldn't see the track. Then Brian Shimer, who won the Olympic bronze in four-man bobsled at the 2002 Games and retired to become head coach of the U.S. team, told Steven of an unorthodox and experimental treatment that could restore his sight and stop the degeneration. It worked.

And now, the blessings of the disasters became obvious. Steven was now a driver, the boss of a sled. And, because he had been forced to learn to drive by instinct and feel, he had an incredible edge over other drivers who relied mostly on their eyesight.

Now Steven's father didn't have to push him. For Steven, it was time for payback. The man who once bounced him from his sled, smashing his Olympic dreams, would now have to face him as a driver. But that was all internal. Steven never once said anything negative about Hays.

Within a few short years, Steven became Hays' biggest competition, then he passed him. But Steven didn't look at being named the driver of USA-1 as the achievement of his goals. Now he could see Vancouver shining like a star in the distance, and getting closer.

Through trial and error, he found the perfect push crew; Steve Mesler, Justin Olsen and Curtis Tomasevicz, all former football players. They had the strength and speed to push a bobsled weighing nearly half a ton down the start with fast momentum. That start momentum is the key to being fast the rest of the way down the track.

Steven and his crew became close. "We're tight. We hang out together. We're friends as well as teammates," he said.

It was this time last year when the USA-1 sled team realized that there could be more to Vancouver for them than just participating. The bobsled World Championships were held in Park City, Steven's home track. His sled won.

They knew they had won as soon as they shot across the finish. They jumped out of the sled, whipped off their helmets and screamed, hugging and hi-fiving each other. Steven turned away. He was crying, and didn't want the photographers surrounding him to see.

Steven Holcomb is a modest man. He always downplays his abilities. But that night, as he presented his mother with the flowers that were given to him on the podium as the new world champion, this reporter questioned him closely about his thoughts for Vancouver.

Holcomb took a deep breath, then said steadily, "If we all stay healthy, I---" He paused. "I think our chances may be..." Again, a pause. "Good."

As the world now knows, his chances were better than good. They were golden.