In April, Steven Holcomb's U.S. bobsled teammate Brent Fogt received a U.S. Army ranking promotion to captain. Fogt invited the team to the ceremony in Lake Placid, New York. Holcomb had a packed schedule of practices, promotional appearances and training, so fellow bobsled athlete and friend Katie Eberling assumed he couldn't make it. But before the ceremony began, Holcomb walked in.
"I thought you had all of these things to do," Eberling said to him.
"I do," Holcomb said. "But showing up for people is really important."
After Holcomb unexpectedly died on May 6, hundreds of family, friends and fellow athletes showed up for him: first, at a Lake Placid memorial service and then at a Park City, Utah, celebration of his life. Former and current teammates wore Superman T-shirts, shared stories and memorialized one of the greatest U.S. bobsled pilots of all time.
And on July 1, USA Bobsled & Skeleton will waive its minimum requirement of being retired from the sport for 10 years and induct Holcomb into its Hall of Fame. The six-time overall World Cup winner, three-time Olympian and five-time World champion will be the sole inductee. The Utah Olympic Park is building a push track that's expected to be finished by the 2017-18 World Cup season, and the track will be named after him.
Those closest to Holcomb call his death "a tragic accident." Initial test results showed that he died from pulmonary congestion; the coroner's report later noted that Holcomb had a blood-alcohol level of .18 and Lunesta, a sleep aid, in his system. Recently, said Brant Feldman, his agent and close friend, he had started taking sleep aids to help him adjust to all of the time zones he had traveled through.
"It was just a tragic miscalculation," Holcomb's mother, Jean, says of his death. "He had everything going for him."
After a strong 2016-17 season, in which he won a two-man World Cup gold medal -- as well as four-man silver and bronze medals and finished second overall in two-man standings and third in four-man -- Holcomb, who grew up in Park City, the youngest of three children, had his sights set on gold at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. He had talked about retiring after the 2018-19 season, following the world championships.
Holcomb entered bobsledding at age 18, after a chance encounter with a former bobsled coach. From 1998 to 2002, Holcomb, an accomplished skier, was a brakeman on the U.S. team, and after missing qualifying for the 2002 Winter Games, he learned how to pilot. He taught himself to drive primarily through vision but began to rely more on feel, particularly when he started to lose his eyesight.
Diagnosed with a genetic degenerative eye disease, keratoconus, Holcomb had worn glasses or contacts for most of his life to combat his failing vision. But it still worsened; so much so that by 2007, as he wrote in his autobiography, "But Now I See," he tried to commit suicide, swallowing 73 pills one night. By the winter of 2008, his vision still worsened and he thought he was out of options.
Through a network of friends, U.S. men's bobsled head coach Brian Shimer located a surgeon, who had developed several procedures, one of which that could potentially help Holcomb. Holcomb scheduled the surgery, and afterward, his vision was so improved (restored from 20-1000 to 20-20) that he struggled on the track initially. He would scratch up the lens of his visor to distort his view.
"But," Shimer says, "it didn't take him long to re-direct that focus."
At the 2010 Vancouver Games, Holcomb piloted the U.S. four-man team, dubbed 'Night Train,' to an Olympic gold medal, ending a 62-year U.S. medal drought.
Fast forward four years and on the first day of competition at the 2014 Olympics, Holcomb tore his calf muscle and part of his Achilles. He could barely walk the next morning. "We didn't know if he'd be able to compete," teammate Steve Langton said. "Between the last run and the next day on the starting block, we didn't say one word to each other."
The duo won a bronze medal in the two-man event. A few days later, still injured, Holcomb piloted the four-man team to a bronze medal.
Holcomb was often quiet; when he spoke, friends weren't surprised when he asked deep-thinking questions. Teammate Carlo Valdes met Holcomb during Valdes's rookie camp in 2015. Valdes was watching TV in the cafeteria when Holcomb walked in and joined him. "I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is Steven Holcomb," Valdes says. "Then we just sat there for 10 or 15 minutes and didn't say a word. You later learn that's just the kind of guy he is."
After Sochi, Holcomb's medal-winning four-man teammates retired. When Langton sent Shimer and Holcomb an email that he was likely retiring, Holcomb's response was two words: "request denied." Langton returned to the sport this year, determined to win another gold with Holcomb. Even through a series of injuries in 2015, and the learning curve of a new class of rookies, Holcomb remained devoted to bobsled.
"He takes what he has and maximizes the potential of it -- that's what made him so special," close friend and 11-time World Cup skeleton medalist Katie Uhlaender says. "He was able to commit and be full-on and not let fear ever get in the way."
After Holcomb passed away, his sister Megan helped clean out his room in Lake Placid. She noticed a piece of paper where he'd jotted down notes, a sort of motivational collection.
"Use a notepad," he'd written. "Technology eliminates skills. But not for me in bobsled -- I blow people's minds!'
Another note: "I never gave up on my eyes."
Nor did he give up on his team.
"He had some difficult things in life and yet I never heard him be negative," Jean, his mother, says. "It was, 'It's a learning curve and we'll find the right combination.' When [Chris] Fogt and Langton came back [in 2017], he was so excited. He'll be with them [on the sled in PyeongChang]. He'll be with them in spirit."