WHISTLER, British Columbia — If one of the U.S. nordic combined team’s three current or former world champions wins the country’s first Olympic medal in the sport today, a good deal of the credit will belong to the town of Steamboat Springs and former coach Tom Steitz.
Nobody believed the U.S. could be competitive in the sport until Steitz started telling people it could and it would. Many thought he was crazy, and there were times when he feared they might be right.
A longtime Steamboat resident, Steitz knows the project never would have succeeded without the support of the people of Ski Town USA and the Steamboat ski area — even though the alpine area had little to gain commercially from promoting a nordic sport practiced miles from its slopes.
Now the team has a historic opportunity in this arcane sport, which combines ski jumping and cross country racing. Steamboat native Todd Lodwick won two gold medals at last year’s world championships. Billy Demong, an upstate New Yorker who spends a lot of time in Steamboat, also won a gold medal at worlds last year. Steamboat native Johnny Spillane won a world championships gold medal in 2003.
“How do you get from being at the bottom of the barrel to going into the (Olympics) with three world champions on one team?” Steitz said. “That’s just sort of mind-boggling.”
Steitz took over the “pathetic” program the day after the 1988 Olympics and coached it through the 2002 Olympics. He still serves as unofficial adviser, confidant and go-fer whenever the team can use him.
Current coach Dave Jarrett started in the sport at Winter Park, moved to Steamboat for high school and competed under Steitz on the national team. “It gives me chills to think about where we have been, where we are going and what’s right around the corner,” Jarrett said.
No coach succeeds without talented athletes, and Lodwick has been one of the world’s best for a long time. Steitz calls him “the franchise player.” Demong and Spillane also have been regular podium finishers on the World Cup.
But a major turning point in the team’s transformation from irrelevance into respectability came way back in 1993, when Steitz told the members of the national team who weren’t from Steamboat that they would have to move there. That way, the team could train together year-round.
“The bad news is, everybody involved with this program is going to have to relocate,” Steitz told them. “The good news is, you’re going to a place called Steamboat Springs.”
People in the community housed team members in basement apartments. For several years the town was a regular stop on the World Cup circuit, and the community turned out in full force.
“The town embraced the idea and the team,” Steitz said. “We had a lot of support from my friends at the ski area. People took in the kids and made them feel part of their families.”
After the 2002 Olympics — where the team finished fourth in the team event — the U.S. Ski Team braintrust decided the squad should relocate in Park City, Utah, to take advantage of the year-round ski jumps there. Steitz resigned.
A year later Spillane won the first nordic world championships gold medal for an American. The 2006 Olympics were disappointing — Spillane and Demong were coming off injuries, and Lodwick got sick during the Games — but Demong won a silver medal at the 2007 worlds. Then Lodwick and Demong accounted for four medals at last year’s worlds.
“This Olympic Games, it seems different,” Lodwick said. “It seems like it’s a little bit of destiny.”
If the team’s first Olympic medal doesn’t come in today’s “normal hill” event, it could come next week in the “large hill” event or four-man team competition. Having three world champions to put in a four-man event is a rare thing, and the team event is probably their best chance.
It has been 86 years since nordic combined was introduced into the Olympics, 86 years without a medal for the U.S.
“It took the Red Sox 86 years to break the curse of the Bambino, so I was going to buy all the boys Red Sox hats,” Steitz said. “But where am I going to find those up here?”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
