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  <title><![CDATA[Lure of podium draws skier back, with perspective]]></title>
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    <article id="10249">
      <title><![CDATA[Lure of podium draws skier back, with perspective]]></title>
      <author><![CDATA[Ski Jump Network Staff]]></author>
      <attribution source="AP"><![CDATA[http://wintergames.ap.org/story.aspx?st=id&amp;id=pe87522f52741419982f8f766644ce932]]></attribution>
      <createdate unixtime="1291895257" delta="60 weeks ago"><![CDATA[12/9/2010]]></createdate>
      <image><![CDATA[i80677.jpg]]></image>
      <lead><![CDATA[WHISTLER, British Columbia - Todd Lodwick had every intention of staying retired after his flameout in the Nordic combined four years ago at the Turin Games.  Besides, he and his wife had a baby and a new home. So he hung up his skis and started selling real estate.  "I had no thoughts of coming back to this sport," he said. "I wasn't thinking of taking a break just to take a break. I was done. Life was taking a different turn." ]]></lead>
      <text><![CDATA[But he lay awake at night, wondering if he had made the right call. Not yet 30, he was still in his prime. He missed the guys, the slopes, the jumps, the competition, the camaraderie. What if he grew old with regrets? He started thinking about a comeback. Now 33, he'll go for gold Tuesday in the team relay, his presence at the Vancouver Games making him the only five-time U.S. Olympic skier. During his time away from the sport, Lodwick visited his former coach and mentor, Tom Steitz, who lives four houses up the street from him in Steamboat Springs, Colo. They'd pop open a couple of cold beers, fire up the laptop and watch World Cup races together. "He's come over at the end of the day and he'd say, 'You know, you used to tell me all the time and I never used to believe you, but this working for a living isn't all it's cracked up to be,'" Steitz said. On those evenings together, Steitz found himself still coaching Lodwick, who was more inquisitive than ever about the skiers they were watching, their techniques, their strategies. "He ingested that," Steitz recalled. "He thought about the fact he was still young, still athletic, still strong - and he had the rest of his life to look back," Steitz said. "He didn't want to ever have to look back." Lodwick said the yearning to return to the sport he loved was overwhelming. His wife, Sunny, blessed the decision, and on a summer night in 2008, he walked over to Steitz's house to give him the news. To his surprise, the man who had recruited him as a teenager wasn't on board for Round 2. Sunny tried her hand at convincing him the next night - still no sale. "He's got a family. He's got a house," Steitz remembers telling Sunny Lodwick. "He's been through all this - and I don't think he's got the drive. I think he just kind of wants to go back to avoid reality." But it seemed every morning, when Steitz went to work, there was Lodwick - running, skiing or roller skating in the wee hours. Every evening, when Steitz came home, there he was again, still training. Steitz remembers pointing out that Lodwick was never ready for training when the coach would bang on his door at 7 a.m. "And he says, 'You know, I'm doing it for me. I never really was just doing it for you in the old days, but this is really my show and I'm going to do it my way.'" "It was pretty clear to me that there was a new fire burning," Steitz said. Less than two years later, Lodwick is poised to make history. He, Johnny Spillane, Billy Demong and fellow Turin veteran Brett Camerota will compete in the team race. Spillane put the Americans on the podium for the first time in the sport, which combines ski jumping with cross-country skiing, when he won silver in the normal-hill event on Feb. 14. Lodwick took fourth, missing out on a bronze medal by 0.7 seconds - a painful reminder of his fourth-place finish in the team event in Salt Lake City. He brushed off the disappointment to celebrate Spillane's silver and get ready for this week's two competitions, including Thursday's 10-kilometer normal-hill individual race, where Lodwick is the defending world champion. That same maturity was on display at last year's world championships, where Lodwick won two titles and had a shot for a third before Demong lost his bib in the team event, disqualifying the Americans. "If you were to go back to 2002 or Torino, that might have been a fatal blow to our team," Demong said. But Spillane laughed it off, and Lodwick, who famously criticized teammate Carl Van Loan after his disappointing performance at the 2006 Games, gave him a big hug. "He said, 'Screw this. Let's go watch this on TV and get ready for Saturday,'" Demong said. Demong won his first world title 48 hours later. He said he couldn't have done it had Lodwick not forgiven him. For his part, Lodwick said his time away from the sport made him realize it's just that - a sport. He stressed he still takes skiing very seriously. He just has more perspective now. "But at the end of the day, my family's more important, my friends are more important," he said, "and who I am is more important than some piece of metal that is hung around someone's neck to signify something." ]]></text>
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