Want some true Olympic heroes? Look to the nordic venue

The U.S. nordic combined boys, from L, Brett Camerota, Bill Demong, Todd Lodwick, Johnny Spillane, show off their hardware in Whistler Thursday night. Ron Judd/Seattle Times

WHISTLER -- The moment cannot pass without a few more words about the nordic combined boys.

The last time we saw Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane in these parts, they were in Squamish. In a motel lobby. Wearing the same clothes they'd been in for a couple days.

The night before, they had arrived in British Columbia after a long, overnight flight from Europe, where they were competing in the 2009 World Cup circuit. Their luggage had not, taking a wrong turn somewhere in Paris. Happens all the time.

After laying out for us, in detail, their plans to peak just in time to come back to Whistler a year later and make history by winning nordic combined medals at the 2010 Games, they took off, running, toward the local Wal-Mart, which we had directed them to.

Might as well seize an opportunity to train -- even if it is to go buy fresh underwear.

Such is the glamourous life of an athete in the nordic combined, an event that mixes ski jumping with cross-country skiing, and produces some of the greatest athletes on the planet -- all of whom toil in anonymity, at least in North America.

It is an all-guts, no-glory pursuit -- especially if you're an American, living in a country where most people don't even know what two sports are "combined" in a combined.

As an Olympic writer, I've seen a lot of athletes throw themselves into a sport, for very little return. Nowhere is that ratio higher than the nordic world.

These are the most down-to-earth, dedicated guys you will find in sport. Want to tag the "hero" label on someone at these Games? Start here.

Demong, 29, of Vermontville, N.Y., grew up in the shadow of of the ski jumps in Lake Placid, N.Y. and planned from grade school to win a gold medal in the Olympics. He was always a strong skier. He was not always a strong jumper. He learned. He trained. And trained. And trained.

Demong is a training fanatic who, in the past two years, began putting the U.S. on the map in the sport internationally, with frequent World Cup podiums, following in the trailblazing steps of his teammate, Todd Lodwick, who won the first U.S. World Cup medal in 1995.

He is as genuine a man as you will ever meet, not a bone of pretense in his body, not an ounce of frustration ever expressed for devoting his life to a pursuit nobody recognizes.

Here's what kind of guy Demong is: Last year, at the conclusion of the world bobsled and skeleton championships in Lake Placid, much of the small town's population was gathered on (frozen solid) Mirror Lake for a winter carnival. On one side of the festivities -- which would conclude with a medal ceremony for the sliding champions -- was a large-screen TV on a trailer, showing highlights of the sliding races.

Someone saw fit to pipe in a piece of video of sports news from the other side of the planet: So out of the darkness, appearing on television from Europe, came an image of Billy Demong, a homegrown Adirondack kid, charging first to the finish line at the nordic world championships in the Czech Republic.

All of Lake Placid stopped on this night with temperatures in the teens and raised a throaty cheer, and muffled, gloved-hand applause, for Bill Demong, one of their own. That heartwarming recognition was the kind of respect you'll only get in a community that understands nordic sports. Unfortunately, those are only small-pocket places in the U.S.

A year later, at a media gathering in Chicago, I told that story to Demong, who was so touched, he got misty-eyed.

You can't fake that kind of authenticity.

Demong and his teammates are the anti-big-shot athletes. They are the kind of people who will go out of their way to explain their sport. The kind of people who open doors for people and speak from the heart. The kind who look you in the eye and shake your hand and remember your name.

Demong is an unabashed ambassador for a sport that deserves to be noticed. Here is a small-town kid, a product of an Olympic environment, who dreamed big, took on the world -- not by himself, but with the help of a very limited supply of fellow soliders, notably Spillane and Lodwick, both of Steamboat Springs -- and beat the world over the line, repeatedly, in the biggest contests on the planet.

The sport requires an elusive combination of skills and has long been dominated by men from Europe and Scandinavia, who have owned the event at the Olympics. Until this one.

Spillane broke the ice for America with a silver medal in the normal hill/10K combined on Feb. 14. He and Lodwick and Demong and Brett Camerota of Park City made history again, winning the team relay medal, on Tuesday.

Today's event, the large hill/10K combo, was the grand finale.

It was hard not to root for Demong when he took to the trail in the Callaghan Valley on his quest for history, and for that individual medal he craved. It was impossible not to feel a chill, and a thrill, as he turned on the jets and launched into a finish kick that put him on the gold medal stand ahead of 40 of the world's hardest chargers, as American flags waved furiously to bring him home.

From the time he was a little kid, the thing Demong wanted most out of life was a gold medal in nordic combined, a sport most people have never heard of. The fact that his country had never had a snowball's chance in hell of winning one before was just another small obstacle to overcome.

Tonight, Demong stepped out on a stage in Whistler Village and saw his life's quest hung around his neck.

History will record it as the first gold medal ever awarded an American in a nordic event at the Olympics -- biathlon, ski jumping, cross-country, nordic combined, you name it.

America was 0-forever in the gold department until Demong raced away from the field today at Whistler Olympic park.

Demong observed later that it's not too often you get into a race where you can count on medals -- "and even less often when you get to pick them."

It was the kind of moment that makes the Olympics special. And it's hard to imagine history being made by a more-deserving soul than Bill Demong.

UPDATE: So, just to add to this. At the U.S. Ski Team party for the nordic combined guys tonight, Demong got down on a knee and proposed to his girlfriend, former skeleton athlete Katie Koczynski .

She said yes.

"I've been carrying it (an engagement ring) around for two months," he said afterward. "I thought, 'If something good happens, I'll do it.' "

Guess this qualifies.

Not 15 minutes after that, Demong was informed that he had been elected by his U.S. teammates to be the flagbearer at Sunday's Closing Ceremony.

All in all, a decent day.