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Winter Games bittersweet for Steve Holcomb's former coach

"He just never gave up. He was a fighter," said Brad DeWeese, Holcomb's former trainer and the head performance coach for the Olympic Training Site at ETSU.

Brad DeWeese began training Steve Holcomb after he'd already won an Olympic gold medal in Vancouver. After he'd worked to not only make the Olympic team, but eventually become the drive for USA-1.

It was also before Holcomb's struggle with losing his eye sight. After he was considered legally blind and forced to retire from the sport in 2007. A surgical procedure would later allow him to see again.

"He just never gave up. He was a fighter," said Brad DeWeese, Holcomb's former trainer and the head performance coach for the Olympic Training Site at ETSU. "He just never gave up. He was a fighter. That mentality that he had, that vision to see through any acute stress or acute problem and see that goal line is what made him unique. "

DeWeese took over his training in 2011, and after a year of working together, Holcomb won three World Championships in the same year, and later two bronze medals in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. They were a successful pair with a strong bond.

"I have fond memories of Steve coming over the house and hanging with my kids and spinning them around and doing helicopters," said DeWeese. "He read books to my kids and so we were always more like family than coach-athlete."

The duo had their sights set on one more Olympic medal in 2018 until DeWeese received an unexpected phone call in May 2017 that Holcomb had passed away in his bed at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York.

An initial autopsy showed that fluid in Holcomb's lungs was a significant factor in his death

"Another athlete had found him and called me to let me know," DeWeese said. "It took me a long time to process that. There are days when I walk in here and I'll have a flashback of Holcomb and I'm like, 'man he should be right here.' But I know that he's looking down and he's happy to see his teammates picking up the pieces for him and for Team USA."

As the U.S. bobsled team competes for gold in PyeongChang, the memory of their former leader lives on. Holcomb will forever be remembered as one of the best to ever compete in the sport, a man who put his teammates and his country first.

"The really great thing about Steve is he considered his Olympic medals the peoples' medals. You looked at his gold medal and his bronze medals from Sochi, they were scratched, they were dented, the lanyards were stained and it was because he loved to share those medals with everybody," DeWeese said. "He knew he represented the United States. That was one thing I found with him is that Steve really did whole-heartedly compete for the United States. He knew when he went to the line that the flag is who he was at that moment. For me he is the Olympic ideal.

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