Steve Cook is not the kind of guy who knows when to quit.
At age 18, he lost the lower part of his right leg in a farming accident.
"I went from a kid to an adult pretty quick," he said. "My mom was with me at the hospital. She said it was just a setback, and I could do anything I wanted."
Apparently, she was right. Cook, now 37 years old and living in Rose Park, collected four cross country skiing silver medals at the Salt Lake Paralympic Games in 2002 and most recently won the Disabled World Cup in Maine.
"He has a great vision of what he's doing and why he's doing it," U.S. Disabled Ski Team head coach Jon Kreamelmeyer said. "Cookie is one of those guys who makes it fun and exciting as a coach. He's a hard worker and extremely competitive."
Cook did not immediately take up skiing after his accident. At first, he said he was most interested in cycling.
"I tried every sport," he said. "I really liked cycling and mountain biking. I entered in a few local races and I got hooked."
Cook said he didn't even know about disabled sports until about 1993. He was invited to join the U.S. disabled cycling team and was able to compete at the Atlanta Paralympics in 1996.
Kreamelmeyer said it wasn't until former ski team head coach Kendall Butts found Cook that he took up cross country skiing.
"He said it would be just another sport to add to my repertoire," Cook said. "It was time for me to move out of cycling and cross country was a good fit for me."
Lauren Scholnick, Cook's wife, said she loves to watch her husband succeed.
"I encourage him to do whatever he needs to do to be successful," she said. "I cheer him on when he's competing as often as I can."
She said she especially enjoys watching him in events that attract athletes from around the world.
"International competition is exciting," she said. "Europeans appreciate the sport more."
When the Paralympics were held in Salt Lake, Scholnick said Cook was a hometown favorite.
"It was pretty cool," she said. "There were a lot of friends and family that don't have that opportunity to watch him that were there."
Cook said he is training for the 2006 Paralympic games in Milan, Italy.
"I'm really pushing," he said. "I'm trying to be really smart in my training. Maybe I can trade those silver (medals) for golds."
Kreamelmeyer said the fact that Cook finished second twice to Norway's Nils-Erik Ulset was somewhat controversial because of time adjustments.
"In the able bodied world, you train and then the strongest and fastest one wins," he said. "In disabled skiing, each disability is given a percent. Often times, the percent is what determines the winner."
He said someone without a disability would be considered 100 percent. Cook has a 96 percent. If both an able bodied racer and Cook finished a race with a time of one minute, 40 seconds, both scores would be multiplied by the racer's percent. So the able bodied racer would still have a time of one minute, 40 seconds, but Cook would have a time of one minute, 36 seconds.
In two of Cook's silver medal finishes, he finished the race with the best overall time before it was adjusted. But because he is 96 percent, and Ulset is an 84 percent, Ulset's adjusted time was better.
"In the long-distance race, Cookie won in actual time by six minutes, but lost by two minutes," Kreamelmeyer said.
Kreamelmeyer said he did not feel Ulset should have been so low of a percent and as a result, he said he is on a committee to really look at the percentage numbers of athletes.
"We're trying to bring equity to the system, but there are so many varying factors," he said.
Kreamelmeyer said he has already seen results in that Cook was the overall World Cup winner earlier this year.
Scholnick said the World Cup title is a bigger accomplishment than gold medals.
"As much as people focus on the Paralympics, the World Cup means more," she said. "It's superior at every discipline and is a much larger accomplishment."
Scholnick said she is shocked that Cook's World Cup title has gone relatively unnoticed by the media.
"It's an interesting phenomenon when he won the World Cup and no one is interested," she said. "You'd think this would be a huge story, but it's been completely ignored."
But regardless of media coverage, Cook will keep on racing.
"Having Cookie on the team is awesome as a coach," Kreamelmeyer said. "He's just a good guy."
E-mail: bhinton@desnews.com