Run, Karla, Run!

VANCOUVER, British Columbia–It’s a story that reads almost like a fairy tale or a hero epic worthy of Joseph Campbell. Billy Demong of U.S. Nordic combined is The Hero With the Thousand Faces. He answered the call to adventure, he faced the supreme ordeal, and now he’s ready to return to the ordinary world with the boons of his quest. He got the gold—and the girl.

“Crossing the finish line to win the medal was the beginning to a little epic journey I had last night,” Demong said. “I’ve really only slept three hours since I crossed the finish line.”

Straight off of winning the U.S. its very first Nordic combined gold medal, Demong dropped to one knee in front of nearly a hundred friends, teammates and family at the Spyder U.S. Ski Team House in Whistler, and proposed to his girlfriend, Katie Koczynski.

“It was less than private,” Demong said. “I just kind of stepped off a cliff and said where’s that microphone?”

Demong had the ring for two months and was just waiting for “a special moment.” The night before the race, he put the ring in his backpack and brought it with him to the starting line, along with a letter from his grandmother. After the medal ceremony, he decided the time was right.

“I asked Johnny, ‘Do you think this is going to be too cheesy?’” Demong said of his teammate, Olympic roommate and triple silver-medalist Johnny Spillane. “He said, ‘No go for it.’”

Koczynski—a former skeleton racer, who competed on the World Cup circuit until 2005—said yes.

As if that wasn’t enough, Demong found out five minutes earlier that he was also voted by his USA teammates to serve as flag bearer for the closing ceremony. It doesn’t get more Campbellian than that—treasure in hand, the hero returns to his country waving its standard.

“Kikkan Randall called me three or four times before I finally called her back. I was like, ‘What? I’m doing stuff here,’” he said of the U.S. Cross Country skier who told him the news. “Immediately, I was kind of hit by how much of an honor that is. Winning a gold medal in the field of play is one thing that speaks to your hard work and your dedication to being an elite athlete. But to be chosen by your peers—it’s pretty special to be recognized in that capacity. I feel really honored.”

Demong’s victory in the individual large hill/10km cross-country event came on the heels of winning a silver medal in the team competition along with Johnny Spillane, Todd Lodwick and Brett Camerota.

But before he was an Olympic hero, Demong was once just a kid from Vermontville, N.Y. He grew up cross-country skiing and idolizing Olympians like Eric Heiden and Bonnie Blair, who also served as flag bearers. His dad began skiing as an adult when he moved to the Adirondacks, and Demong’s first race was at the age of 5.

“All three of us—Johnny, Todd and I—have been here doing this since we didn’t even know what Nordic combined was,” he said. “When I grew up doing Nordic combined, I didn’t know who any of the best guys in the world were. I didn’t have Internet when I was 12 or 13. I think the first time I saw it was when I watched Todd get 13th at the Olympics in Lillehammer. He was my hero for a couple of years until I started beating him.”

Through four Olympics and more than 12 years of toil, he and his teammates fought their way to the podium race by race, battle by battle. When they were still finding their place on the world stage, the team kept challenging themselves to place at premier events.

“Can we do that? Can Americans do that?” Demong said they kept asking themselves. “It’s kind of daunting when you haven’t. It took us a lot longer to do it because it had never been done.”

Then one day, after more than a dozen years, Demong won a gold medal. But not just any gold medal—America’s very first Nordic combined gold medal in 86 years of Olympic competition. And like all great Campbell heroes, he returns with lessons learned from his journey.

Demong credits his success to years of perseverance, but more importantly, teamwork. He, Spillane and Lodwick have worked together to build the program into the success it is now.

“Johnny started us off right two weeks ago by winning the first silver medal for the US Nordic combined team in Olympic history,” he sad. “That just really took the pressure off.”

After winning silver in the team competition, Demong said the U.S. was feeling good going into the final event.

“So yesterday, Johnny and I woke up and we’re doing our old man things on the yoga mat,” he said about the duo who are nearing 30. “The atmosphere was just really light in our room. We met up with Todd and Taylor [Fletcher]. Todd had that same air about him. Like, we’ve done everything we came here to do already. Now let’s just go do this for fun. If didn’t matter in a tough day like yesterday how many times they restarted that round, how bad the wind got, how long it took—if there was a competition yesterday, we were going to have a smile on our face and do the best with the conditions that we had.”

The three amigos worked together throughout the cross-country portion to bring home a win. Spillane and Demong traded leads up front, and Lodwick set the pace of the chase pack, doing his best to hold them back.

“It was an exemplary performance of our teamwork again—Johnny and I going back and forth and pacing each other, helping each other and then going away together at the finish, and having Todd hold back the field, just gave us that big comfortable gap,” he said. “I think out team story is really special and I think this Olympics has reminded us how far we’ve come together and how each of us have carried the team at one point or another in training and in competition. That success of individuals but shared by the team is what has allowed us to build for so long in such a linear way.”

Now that he’s a national hero, Demong is hopeful that the U.S. will be able to capitalize on the team’s success and continue to build a strong Nordic combined program. He pointed to races like the Super Q, the largest juniors race in North America, where 680 entrants showed up to ski, and another local race in Utah he recently attended that had nearly 200 kids.

“I think there’s a lot of momentum right now in the winter sports movement,” he said. “And I think these results in the World Championship last year and the Olympics this year really help boost not only the number of kids who want to try it or are already doing it, but really will enhance across the board the expectations of Nordic skiers.”

The U.S. Nordic combined program runs juniors camps to help suss out potential Olympians, and he hope that will continue going forward.

“This is a pretty hard performance to follow up even if we have a great team,” he added. “At the same time, we did sweep World Championships last year so it does seem like we have a good idea how to prepare for big events. I think we have done a really good job over the last three years to reignite high-level development through a series of juniors’ camps we are already running. That has already proven to be just as successful now as when Johnny and I were part of that program. We have much better idea of how to do that in perpetuity.”

He pointed to young skiers like 19-year-old Taylor Fletcher who competed in his first Olympics with the team. In his first year of international competition, Demong said Fletcher was disappointed with a 31st place at the World Cup.

“We were all like, ‘Man, that’s great. When we were your age at our first World Cup, we would have been psyched to get 31st,’” Demong said. “Then the kid goes and scores points and earns himself a spot on the Olympic team one weekend later.”

“All these kids are growing up with this, they watch it on Universal Sports, they watch it now on NBC,” he added. “Their expectation of what they’re capable of as an American Nordic skier has changed fundamentally.”

Still, Demong said he’s hoping to keep skiing until the next generation of Nordic combiners can take over the mantle.

“I feel more of a drive to keep skiing for more years to help bridge that gap for the next team,” he said. “As soon as a couple of those guys get on the podium, I’ll just throw my skis up on the rack and head out. That’s definitely a big motivation right now.”

He said how well the younger racers are doing will help him and his teammates decide when to retire.

“We built this for a long time and we want to see this continue.”

The team’s success has helped enliven a fan base across the country, and he also hopes that all the Olympic media attention will attract new people to the sport.

“People can say, ‘All I really need are some skis and some poles and I can go out in the back yard and try this,’” he said. “And I hope that’s true.”

Today, he received a text message from an Illinois woman whose iPhone he found buried in the snow while backcountry skiing last year. He managed to track her down and return the phone.

“She just texted me and said, ‘We didn’t know who you were then, but we do now,’” Demong said laughing.

An avid cyclist, he also received a congratulatory tweet from Lance Armstrong.

“He said, ‘@billydemong congratulations on the gold, now get back on the bike!’”

But before that, Demong still needs time to revel in all that’s happened. Speaking about what was going through his mind as he received his medal, Demong seemed at a loss for words, and nearly on the verge of tears.

On the podium standing next to his teammate Spillane, who won silver, Demong watched Canadian Mounties hoist two American flags to “The Star Spangled Banner.”

“Johnny and I made eye contact and it was like ‘We did it. We did it.’” he said. “It comes in bursts like right now when I get a glimpse of it and it makes me want to cry. Then I feel kind of numb for a little while. It’s gonna take time for it all to sink in.”

Much like Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, Demong seems transformed by the experience. He faced the adventure and like all heroes, according to Campbell, is returning home with a boon. Sometimes it’s a treasure, sometimes it’s love and sometimes it’s just a good story tell.

Demong has them all. He gets the gold and the girl. And hopefully, lives happily every after.

This post first appeared in The Washington Times Communities on Feb. 27, 2010.