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Snowboard: Heart stopper
By Dennis Romboy
Deseret News Olympic specialist
PARK CITY — A broken buckle on his left boot seconds before the snowboard race of his life left Chris Klug frazzled. But as he has in the past, he found a way to recover.
With an Olympic medal on the line in the parallel giant slalom, Klug and his coaches scrambled to patch things together in the starthouse.
"I was having a heart attack," he said. "After my liver transplant, that's the last thing I need."
Wax technician Jay Cooper found a piece of metal and some duct tape to bind the buckle that holds Klug's foot firmly in his rear boot.
With the race starter yelling for him to get into the start gate, Klug briefly wondered whether the looseness he felt in the boot would hinder his run.
"It just sort of felt like, 'Hey, I've handled worse odds than this and more adversity than this. This is all going to work out in our favor,' " he said.
And it did.
With the flag-waving crowd chanting "USA! USA!," the makeshift buckle held long enough for Klug to easily outrace Frenchman Nicolas Huet to the bottom of the long, steep course to take the bronze medal.
"I'm so stoked to be able to do it here on my home turf with all my friends and my family," said Klug, mindful that many of them saw him through some dark days before his successful liver surgery. He pounded his chest with his fist and pointed to them after the race.
Philipp Schoch, a relative unknown coming into the 2002 Winter Games, won the gold medal, ousting four higher-seeded riders, including Klug, along the way in the head-to-head racing format.
"My strong point today was that I had very strong nerves and the other competitors did not have strong nerves," said the Swiss rider whose previous best in the PGS was seventh in his World Cup debut in Austria two years ago. "I kept myself in control."
Schoch, 22, bested Richard Richardsson of Sweden in the gold-medal final.
"It had a small mistake in the (upper) pitch just coming into the flats," said the silver-medalist Richardsson. "I thought I was going to catch him. It was all or nothing."
Klug's bronze brought the total to five medals U.S. snowboarders earned in the Salt Lake Games, giving them half of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association's goal of 10. It also was the 14th U.S. medal won in 2002, surpassing the United States' previous Winter Olympics high of 13 medals.
"We really pulled our weight, I think," said U.S. Snowboard Team head coach Peter Foley.
Klug, of Aspen, Colo., credited the halfpipe team — which earned four of the five — with getting things rolling. He even admitted to hanging Ross Powers' and Kelly Clark's gold medals around his neck and saying, "Hey, I want one of these."
His shot at gold ended in the semifinals against Schoch. Klug lost his line to fall way behind in the first run and went down on the second run.
That put him in a battle for bronze with Huet, where a loss meant no hardware at all.
After undergoing a liver transplant in July 2000 to save him from the same disease that claimed football great Walter Payton, an Olympic medal didn't even seem within his grasp.
"A year and half ago, I thought I was going to die, to tell you the truth," he said. "I wasn't thinking too much around July last year about coming back and winning a bronze medal. I was just hoping to live at that point. It's a dream come true. Today, without a doubt, is one of the most fun days of my life."
Klug had more than a few scary moments during Friday's race. He often fell behind his opponents after coming into turns too wide or having to put his hand down to maintain balance. He charged hard on the flat part of the course to make up time.
"It was a roller coaster, for sure," Foley said, adding that Klug had to do some "superhuman stuff" to make up for his mistakes.
The same could be said of his remarkable comeback in life.
Foley marveled at Klug's ability to win a medal after all he has gone through, saying "it doesn't even matter what color. To get that job done, is unreal."
Klug and some 75 of his family and friends, including longtime girlfriend Missy April, shed a few tears watching him Friday.
April said she was thinking about how good Klug is at overcoming adversity. "He did it again today."
E-mail: romboy@desnews.com
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February 16, 2002
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