Steamboat’s own Berend: better late than not at all
Nordic combined athlete qualified for team at last possible moment
BONGPYEONG-MYEON, SOUTH KOREA» Ben Berend was crushed. The 22-year-old Steamboat Springs nordic combined athlete had just learned late last month that his efforts to make the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics had fallen short. He called his parents. They canceled their plane tickets to South Korea.
He was in a hotel lobby in Austria as it began to sink in. His coaches called a team meeting.
Berend wasn’t happy about that.
“I was definitely wondering why I was in that meeting. They were starting to talk about the Olympics and I was like, ‘Oh, this is just torture,’ ” he said.
His South Korea-bound teammates were in the room: Steamboat Springs brothers Bryan and Taylor Fletcher, his lifelong pal Jasper Good and Wisconsin’s Ben Loomis. So was Bill Demong, the executive director of USA Nordic Sport. It was the afternoon of the last day to announce Olympic team rosters.
“None of us actually knew why we were there,” said Taylor, noting that the team had more than a few bad-news meetings over the season and he was fearful maybe the U.S. was about to lose an Olympic spot. “They really had to drag Ben up from downstairs to come to the meeting.”
Then Demong said he’d just heard some news. There’s been some shuffling in the international field of 55 nordic combined athletes. The U.S. was getting a fifth spot.
“He looks at Ben and goes, ‘So make sure you get your bags packed for Korea,’ ” Taylor Fletcher said. “You could see the whole attitude shifted, just an overwhelming amount of joy comes to his face. That’s a moment we all kind of live for.”
Berend called his dad for the second time that day. This time with good news. They needed to buy new tickets to South Korea.
Nordic combined is an intriguing marriage of ski jumping and cross country racing. In individual and team events, the key is to fly far and get a good start on the cross country race. Land short and you start with a time deficit. It makes for exciting contests, with a vibrant blend of endurance and audacity. And Steamboat Springs is a North American breeding ground for nordic jumpers, thanks to the jumps at the city’s Howelsen Hill ski area. Every Wednesday, Howelsen teems with Steamboat kids who fly off ski jumps in between pizza sessions in the fabled Olympian Hall.
“I remember those were the best days of my life,” said Berend, who once faked illness to get out of school until his mom reminded him as she was driving him home that it was Wednesday. “And my mom said, ‘You know if we get home, you are not allowed to go to Wednesday night jump.’ So I had her drive me back to school and told her I’m not actually sick.”
Those jumps fostered Steamboat’s nordic Olympic medalists like Todd Lodwick and Johnny Spillane. Good and Berend took a bus from their middle school to Olympian Hall to watch Demong, Lodwick and Spillane win silver in the team event at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
“We were standing on trash cans in the back of the room and it was the coolest thing ever to see those guys win,” said the 21-year-old Good, whose dad was a national team moguls coach.
Good had secured his spot on the U.S. Olympic Team a few hours before Berend. He got the news while they were sharing a room at that Austrian hotel. He was obviously elated. But despondent for Berend. They had spent a stressful, laborious year urging each other to dig deeper and work harder to secure their Olympic dream.
“It was a very odd place to be,” said Good of his sways between celebration and sorrow.
Steamboat Springs fielded two Olympians — Todd Lodwick and Johnny Spillane — on the American nordic combined team in 2010 and that worked out really well, with a harvest of four medals that established the U.S. as a competitor in the European-dominated sport.
Fewer cities cultivate Olympic aspirations like Steamboat Springs. Growing up, Berend said his hometown felt like the center of the nordic combined universe, a place where Olympic dreams are not so elusive and dreamy.
In December, Berend was weaving though hordes of ski jumping kids at Olympian Hall when he came upon a dad and his son.
“This kid was probably three, four-yearsold,” he said. “And he looked up at his dad and really matter-of-factly just said, ‘You know, I think I’m going to the Olympics someday.’ It made me smile. That’s what it kind of teaches you growing up in Steamboat, that’s something you can dream of.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins