Johnson Can Always Remember the Medal

About three dozen people mingled quietly in the room. They were three dozen faces familiar to him in another lifetime, but now mostly foreign.

Every so often someone would approach Bill Johnson trying to rekindle his happiness, and maybe the memory he lost in the terrible accident, too.

Some were more successful than others.

“There’s Jimmy over there,” Johnson said to one man.

Actually, it was Johnny.

“I know you!” he said to another.

The man’s name escaped Johnson.

Another handshake and hug came moments later. Johnson studied the face carefully and broke out the biggest smile of the night.

“That cowboy hat,” Johnson said. “I’d know it anywhere. Good to see you, Billy.”

Yes, it was his friend Billy Kidd, Olympic silver medal winner in the 1964 slalom. Kidd and Johnson sat together on the sofa, two former Olympic skiers talking about the old days, their families and, of course, the men’s downhill race that took place a few days earlier.

“Why did three Austrians beat the nearest American?” Johnson asked.

Kidd shrugged.

“Because I fell,” Johnson said.

“Yes,” Kidd replied softly, touching Johnson’s shoulder. “You did.”

The tumble did more than cost Johnson a remote chance to make another Olympic team. It nearly cost him his life.

It happened last March 22, on a slippery slope in Montana, where a 40-year-old trapped in a serious mid-life crisis tried to be a world-class skier again.

Back in 1984 he came from nowhere to become the first American to win gold in the downhill, the mother of all ski races.

He looked at all of the competitors who gathered on Mount Bjelasnica in Sarajevo that day, sneered at the mighty Austrians and made a boast that would later prove prophetic.

“I don’t know why everyone else is here,” Johnson said. “They should go ahead and hand the medal to me.”

He felt just as confident in the months leading up to the Salt Lake Games.

He knew he would make the U.S. team and stun the world. He soared down the mountain trying to reach a qualifying time. Then his skis caught an edge. His feet spread far apart. He flipped. He fell face first. His unconscious body kept drifting. He was airlifted off the slopes.

“I was there the next day,” Kidd said. “All of us knew it wasn’t just a fall where you break a leg. We knew it was far more serious than that.”

Months of hospitalization and therapy followed. Johnson, who was in a coma for three weeks, suffered severe neurological damage and massive internal bleeding.

Surgeons removed a quarter-inch of his brain, froze it, then replaced it. There’s still a knuckle-sized dimple in his skull, which Johnson invites anyone to touch.

“They took my head apart and put me back together,” he said.

Not quite.

The same sport that brought him fame has rendered him helpless in certain areas. A portion of Johnson may never return.

He walks and talks slowly. He’s back under the care of his mother, D.B. Johnson. And an entire decade was wiped from his memory bank.

Anything that happened in the 1990s escapes him. He didn’t know his father died six years ago. He can’t recall the birth of his two boys, or their names, or their T-ball games.

As she watched his attempts at conversation the other night, D.B. Johnson often interrupted and gently filled in the gaps for her son.

“He says a lot of things that just aren’t right and things we haven’t heard of,” she said with a sigh. “We have no idea where it’s coming from, either. That’s the hardest part.”

He serves as an extreme reminder of the risks skiers take each time they test themselves against the mountain.

In their quest to find satisfaction in the form of a fancy medallion, they push themselves to the limits of speed and safety.

Almost every Olympic skier can smash records, but only the truly brave ever try. They’re a lot like NASCAR drivers. At some point along runs that can reach 90 miles per hour, the element of danger taps them on the shoulder and tells them to ease up, or else.

Ultimately, the Bode Millers of the sport must decide: Is this really worth a medal? In Johnson’s case, he wasn’t trying to reclaim Olympic glory, just the lifestyle he once knew.

He went through a bitter divorce with a woman he loved. She took the boys and moved, denying him the chance to watch them grow. The family breakup devastated him. He knew only one way to replace the absence in his life.

“For him, skiing again was a healing thing,” his mother said. “It was something he knew and something he loved doing. Considering what he was going through, he needed to be active. He was training hard and trying to get in shape.”

It was a radical decision by a skier who hadn’t competed in years, and who was well beyond his prime. But he felt a berth on the 2002 team would impress his former wife.

“I lost her and tried to get her back,” Johnson said, “although I don’t know why. I can’t remember too much about our time together.”

On his last night in Salt Lake City before returning home to Gresham, Ore., Thursday, Johnson was honored by a roomful of former Olympians. The purpose of the fund-raiser was to reduce his medical bills, and their presence was to increase his awareness.

As the evening progressed, so did Johnson. The names and the faces became easier to match.

He does remember how to ski and just as important, why he skis.

He keeps a small black case tucked inside his jacket. He reached for it, opened it and revealed the 1984 gold medal. He does this almost daily. It’s almost a reflex now.

“Everyone here at the Olympics is trying to get something I already have,” he smiled as he dangled the medal. “I won this a while ago. I remember how. It was a good day.”