SOLDIER HOLLOW — Salt Lake City's Steve Cook quietly won his fourth silver medal of the 2002 Paralympics Saturday, finishing behind an 18-year-old Norwegian in the men's cross country skiing 20K race.
But come Monday, Cook won't be flying to New York to tour the late-night talk-show circuit, four medals around his neck and an aw-shucks smile on his face.
Nike hasn't called, and there are no plans to put him on a Wheaties box.
Come Monday, Cookie, as his teammates call him, will go back to work at a bicycle shop, and even though he won more medals than any other American at the 2002 Paralympics, he will work the same shift he always works: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Such is the life of a Paralympic champion. Such is the life of a cross country skier in the United States.
For some reason, a man skiing for miles with 1 1/2 legs doesn't captivate the American public like a pudgy farm boy doing a cartwheel on a wrestling mat.
Rulon Gardner gets to wear a milk mustache on a billboard, Steve Cook gets bicycle grease.
But Cookie wouldn't complain; he probably wouldn't even want the attention. He is not a man who points to the heavens or wraps himself in an American flag at the finish line. He is as quiet and as modest as his blue eyes are piercing.
He is a cross country skier after all, not a track star.
What Cook wants is a change, not attention. He hopes his medals get more disabled people to play sports, and he hopes other Americans will believe that if he can beat Norwegians and Russians with 1 1/2 legs, they can do it with two.
"We're not also-rans anymore," he said after the race. "We're making it known that we're good skiers too."
He had already proven that three times coming into Saturday's race, and he knew that in the falling snow — his favorite weather — a fourth medal was likely, a gold was possible.
But on the second lap the light snow stopped and the sun came out — ultimately proving to be an omen portending it was not Cook's day for gold.
He passed Germany's Josef Giesen, who won bronze, at the 15K mark and crossed the finish line in first place. As in Tuesday's 10K, Cook had to wait for the last skier to finish, Norway's Nils-Erik Ulset.
When Ulset finished, with an adjusted time 2:25 better than Cook, the Americans could only marvel at the ability of the 18-year-old Norwegian skiing in his first Paralympics.
"I tried hard to give everything I had up on those last hills," Ulset said. "I was told pretty early that I was leading, so I just told myself that I wasn't going to lose any time and I didn't."
Cook admitted that he was disappointed but said four silver medals is more than he expected. He came into these games hoping for one medal, he leaves them with more medals than any other American.
E-mail: jhyde@desnews.com