WHISTLER — After an Olympic quest that spanned five Winter Games, as falling snow melted in the tears streaming down his cheeks, Todd Lodwick at last found the perfect souvenir he chased around the globe for half his life.
Daddy’s coming home to Steamboat Springs with a present certain to please his daughter.
“You know, it’s funny,” Lodwick said Tuesday, after he helped the United States win a silver medal in the nordic combined 4 x 5-kilometer team competition. “My daughter is 4 years old and she only really cares about trophies. Every time I go away on a trip to ski, she asks if I’m going to bring a trophy home. And I told her right before I left I’d do my best not to disappoint her.”
When young Charley Lodwick starts elementary school in Colorado, any guesses what she is going to take to show and tell?
And here’s your proof that everything you really need to know you learned in kindergarten: “Growing up,” Lodwick said, “the biggest rule in my family was: If you start something, you finish it.”
Well, maybe it’s about half- past time for Lodwick to take the skis off his aching feet, kick back and sip a well-earned beer.
“It took a while, that’s for sure,” said Lodwick, laughing. “Five Olympic Games. Eighteen years on the national team. Traveling the world. All seeking one thing: putting an Olympic medal around my neck.”
Chasing a dream that at times seemed more like a fool’s errand, this journey took Lodwick from child to man. It carried him from his hometown in the Rocky Mountains to competition in Norway to Canada, with heartbreak and frustration at places named Nagano, Salt Lake City and Turin along the way.
Think about that a minute. Most working adults don’t stay at any one job as long as this 33-year-old man has been chasing gold, silver and bronze.
In an obscure sport whose details would probably stump nine out of 10 “Jeopardy” contestants, Lodwick began attending the Winter Games in 1994. He was 17. Bill Clinton was president of the United States and Boyz II Men were just kids. Connect the dots and crisscross the globe the way Lodwick did to the site of five Olympics, and the long, strange trip would push your frequent-flier miles to 20,897.
Nordic combined requires the diverse skills of ski jumping and cross country skiing, which both involve skis, but are about as different as sky diving and scuba diving. From childhood to middle age, Lodwick hurtled off mountains and huffed through the woods. Somehow, he found time to get married. Experienced the joy of fatherhood. Departed the sport he loved in 2006. Began growing a gut in retirement. Then, on a lark, came back despite a stern warning from a trusted friend.
“It wasn’t like (Lodwick) took a break. This guy quit. Believe me, he and I ate a lot of hamburgers and drank a lot of beer,” said Tom Steitz, who is Lodwick’s former coach and current next-door neighbor. “In 2008, when he came over, sat on my porch and told me he was coming out of retirement, I said: ‘No way. I can’t get behind this crazy idea.’
“It was the dumbest thing I ever heard. But now look at him. I guess Todd made me eat those words. And now it looks like I’m going to have to go sit on his couch and play with a silver medal.”
After leading his three U.S. teammates by leaping 132.2 meters in the morning competition, Lodwick kissed his daughter for good luck, then produced a strong second leg on the cross country relay.
But the racers from Austria, benefiting from wax on their skis perfect for traveling over the wet afternoon snow, finished in first place.
In an era when money rules most games played by grown men, loyalty still matters on the U.S. nordic combined team. To win only America’s second medal in the sport since 1924, Lodwick has shared hotel rooms, cold vans and tired jokes for more than 300 nights per year with teammates Johnny Spillane and Bill Demong for more than a decade.
“To tell you the truth, I enjoy it. These are my best friends,” said Lodwick, who then proved how much he cares for his buddies by ribbing them. “It’s kind of hard to hate these guys. I mean, look at them. Aren’t they cute?”
His scavenger hunt around the world for a precious medal done, there’s only one place on earth that Lodwick really wants to go now: Steamboat Springs (pop. 9,815).
So next time you’re in the ‘Boat, whether shopping for a cowboy hat at F.M. Light & Sons or cutting up the powder in the Closet trees up on the ski hill, look for Lodwick, who won’t be hard to spot.
He will be the guy with the silver hanging from his neck.
“I going to wear it,” Lodwick said. “I’m going to wear it everywhere.”
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
