Pragelato, Italy – Others might have made a point of not watching the medals ceremony after coming up short in their last Olympic race. Todd Lodwick stood, stared and reflected.
“It’s the last Olympic Games, and you just kind of soak it in,” the nordic combined skier from Steamboat Springs said after finishing ninth in today’s large hill sprint event. “You can’t do a sport and not reflect what this is all about. It was hard …”
Lodwick’s voice quavered and his eyes teared up.
“It was more about the Olympics than anything else.”
Lodwick will retire as America’s most accomplished nordic combined skier with six World Cup victories and 24 podium finishes but with no medals from the Olympics or world championships. His best individual finish in four Olympics was fifth in the sprint event four years ago.
“I’ve been Olympic champion 100 times in my head,” said Lodwick, 29. “Sometimes you work really hard and don’t accomplish what you set out to do. It’s been a (great) ride.”
Lodwick’s problem today was performing “like a bag of trash” on the jump hill and placing 19th, which imposed a handicap of one minute, 14 seconds in the 7.5-kilometer cross country race. He had the sixth-best cross country time.
Austria’s Felix Gottwald won the gold medal, with Norway’s Magnus Moan taking the silver and Germany’s Georg Hettich the bronze.
In the other individual nordic combined event, the small hill 15K race, athletes get two chances on the jump hill. In the sprint, they get one jump. It’s like handicapping your start in a 10K road race with one swing in a closest-to-the-pin contest.
“It’s 12 years of putting your mind to something that comes once every four years, and hopefully that seven seconds is the best seven seconds of your life,” Lodwick said, referring to the flight time of a ski jump. “It’s really, really hard to train and be at the top of the game for those ultimate seven seconds. My cross country skiing is there.”
Finishing right behind Lodwick in 10th place was teammate Johnny Spillane, but Spillane could be happy with his finish. Spillane, another Steamboat skier, separated his shoulder crashing on a jump hill in November and missed most of the season. Trying to make up for lost time, he trained too hard in January and wound up with a case of over-training syndrome three weeks before the Olympics.
For 10 days, he had to go against every instinct of an endurance athlete, resting when he wanted to be pushing himself. He wasn’t allowed to do anything more strenuous than light spinning on an exercise bike for short periods.
“I have the hardest time with that,” said Spillane, 25. “But there come a point where you’re just so frustrated with the way you’re skiing, I was willing try anything. If it was just laying in bed, that’s what I was going to do.”
With Lodwick retiring, Spillane becomes the leader of the U.S. team. Spillane won a gold medal in the sprint event at the 2003 world championships.
“I’m really looking forward to finishing the season and lots of good seasons still to come,” Spillane said. “I still love doing this and I have a lot of things I want to accomplish.”
Staff writer John Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com.
