Paying it forward

Once upon a time, Nick Baumgartner was just a kid from a small Michigan town, looking for something he could do better than his older brothers.

Following countless years of training, injuries and heartbreaks now has something they don't - an Olympic gold medal.

Baumgartner said life has been a whirlwind in the weeks since claiming the title at the Beijing Games in mixed snowboard cross with USA teammate Lindsey Jacobellis. His victory tour brought him to Rhinelander High School on Monday, where he shared his message of perseverance on his way to becoming a 40-year-old gold medalist.

"Coming here to Rhinelander is kind of cool because I get to train in the offseason out at Ski Brule with the ski and snowboard team," Baumgartner said. "It's cool to come back here. They've seen how hard I've been working over the years. For them to be able to see what comes from that, and to get that gold medal, is quite awesome."

Baumgartner has visited a number of schools in and around his hometown of Iron River - located roughly 90 minutes northeast of Rhinelander. He's shared his story, hoping to inspire the next generation - and maybe even the next Nick Baumgartner.

"If bringing this medal around can inspire more stories like mine to come out of this area, it would be an absolute honor for me to be able to do that," he said.

Baumgartner recalled the roller coaster of emotions surrounding this year's games - going from getting knocked out in the quarterfinals of men's boardercross and thinking his dream of an Olympic medal might be over to getting one more shot in the mixed event and earning redemption.

"I made one little mistake in that race, and there it was. It was gone. At that moment, I didn't know for sure that I was going to get the opportunity at redemption," he said, adding that he did not learn until after his emotional interview with NBC that he'd get one more race. "I had to get my head right. I couldn't be down and depressed anymore because there was something else I needed to focus on. Just like any time you guys fail at something, you have to pick yourself up. For me, that race was over. There was nothing I do to change the results of that race. I needed to look ahead at what was coming and needed to take all the positives and good lessons I could take in that loss and let all the negative stuff go away."

Baumgartner narrowly won his leg of the relay and then "cheered like crazy" as Jacobellis made her way down the hill to finish off the victory.

Just like that, Baumgartner became the oldest Olympic medalist in the sport of snowboarding.

"My journey, if this story doesn't tell you that you can do anything - regardless of where we're from and, in my situation, how old you are - I don't know what can," he said.

Baumgartner's road to gold was much longer than just this year's games. It was his fourth Olympics. The closest the 2011 X-Games champion had gotten to a medal previously was fourth in boardercross in the 2018 Pyeongchang games - and that came only weeks after breaking his back in a crash while training in Austria on his 36th birthday.

"You can't give up," he said. "You've got to keep fighting through it. If you don't achieve it the first time, use what you learned from that adversity and that failure to try the next time, and then keep trying. You guys, 17 years - 17 years - my goal was to medal at the Olympics and 17 years I failed, until I didn't."

Students hung on every word during his nearly 35-minute presentation. Afterward, he stuck around for pictures and autographs with a number of students.

"It's really inspiring, just the words he had to say. He had a lot to say about not giving up on what you want to do," senior AJ Gillespie said.

Showing off the gold

Dressed in sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap, Baumgartner appeared before the crowd without his gold medal -only to pull it from his sweatpants pocket roughly 10 minutes into the speech.

"I don't hide this thing away. I don't put it in a safe where I can admire it myself," he told the crowd. "To see the reaction of people when I pull this thing out of my pocket and they can't believe it, when I hand this over to someone and they feel the weight of it, and they see it and they can hold it in their hand, it's almost like when they gave it to me, to see that reaction."

Baumgartner said he has appreciated the support - both in the Northwoods and around the country - in the weeks since winning the gold.

"It's quite a whirlwind and it's a dream come true. So even if it gets exhausting, this is what I wanted, so here we go," he said. "To bring this home and to walk into a hero's welcome, for me just out there doing something I enjoy to do and something I'm passionate about, has been an unbelievable experience."

Home sweet home

In the weeks leading up to the games, Baumgartner was home for the holidays, training at Ski Brule. While it may not be nearly as tall or as steep as Olympic or World Championship venues, Baumgartner said the Iron River hill is home, and still played a vital role in his preparation for the games.

"For me, just making turns at Brule makes it crisp," he said. "All distractions are gone when I'm at home and I'm riding the chair lift. Sometimes, I've almost got the whole place to myself, I'm making turns. For me, I'm very fortunate to have a place like Ski Brule in my backyard that, one allowed me to gain a passion for something but it also allowed me to hone that skill to become one of the best snowboarders in the world."

While at Brule, Baumgartner had a chance to ride and train with the Rhinelander/Northland Pines Alpine ski team. It was an experience that Max Durkee, this year's individual conference champion in boys' snowboarding, relished.

"Training with Nick was really good insight because he had a lot of knowledge and he's from the area," he said. "Training with him was pretty inspiring because it kind of pushed me to do great. Side-by-side on the hill, obviously he's going to be a little faster than us. It was pretty motivational, made us want to push yourself."

For Baumgartner, riding with the Hodags goes back to paying it forward in the sport he loves.

"When I get to train with these kids and I get to see the fire in their eye, they're at the beginning of their journey, that inspires me to keep going," he said. "If I can use my story and continue to do good things, I can share this with these kids and see what they're made of. These kids, they're the future. My athletic career has an expiration date. So the more I can inspire people while I'm in it, then I can want and cheer for them when it's their turn."

Ask the audience

Baumgartner used roughly 20 minutes of his session taking questions from the RHS student body, ranging from which were his favorite Olympics (Vancouver in 2010), to sharing stories about the face of U.S. Snowboarding, Shaun White, has matured over the years.

"To see him at this last Olympics, he was that guy you would want Shaun White to be," he said. "He cared about people. He took pictures with people. He can't go anywhere without taking pictures. To see him take all that time and to do that, to see how humble he has become, is awesome to see in an athlete.

Baumgartner also shared the more human side of the Olympics, stating he had positive experiences in Beijing and in Sochi, Russia in 2014, despite what has been portrayed by the western media in regard to their governments.

"The people were so inviting to have us there," he said. "Yes, some of the countries that we go to have differences with their governments, but people are still the same and they loved having us. Just like in China, there's a lot of controversy, lots of controversy that's going on with China, but the people there that were volunteering at the Olympics were so sweet and so welcoming and they loved having us. Just to be part of that, you could see their eyes light up and it was an unbelievable experience."

Baumgartner also said he had a chance to speak with multiple Ukrainian athletes in Olympic Village just days before Russia's invasion of the eastern European nation.

"For me that was big," he said. "To know what they're going through and the troubles they had to go through to be able to get here, and then to talk to them and just get on the same level with them for a little bit and talk about what's going on, to see they were able to go through all that and still make it to the pinnacle of their sports career, is quite an inspiration to myself."

Not done yet

Baumgartner said he was unsure yet if he'd be able to defend his gold in 2026 Games in Italy, but also said he's far from ready to hang up his board.

"Four years away is a long ways away and a lot can happen in four year. So I'm going to focus, I'm going to still set a crazy goal, World Championships 2023 in Bakuriani, Georgia," he said. "I'll be 41 years old. For me, I don't want to live the regret of what if. What if I would have put in all that hard work and all that sacrifice, could I have become World Champion at 41? We're not going to leave it to guessing. I'm going to put that work in, I'm going to make those sacrifices and we're going to find out. Win or lose, I'm going to hold my head up high because I know I'm going to put in all the work I need to. If it works out, it works out and I hope to be able to bring a medal back at 41 as well."

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].