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From football to skiing, area teen has come into his own
By Jill Lieber
USA TODAY
    In late July, when Colorado's freshmen football players were to report for practice, highly-recruited, multi-sport phenom Jeremy Bloom paid an impromptu visit to head coach Gary Barnett.
    An all-state wide receiver and sprinter from Loveland High School, Bloom had just flown in from Chile, where, as a member of the U.S. Ski Team, he'd made quite an impression at a moguls training camp. He had a shot at making the Salt Lake City Winter Games.
    But to give him the World Cup starts he'd need to qualify, Bloom had to promise to quit football: "I was so nervous. Colorado had a huge investment in me."
    But Barnett surprised him. "I told Jeremy he had an amazing opportunity, that if he really wanted to go for the gold, that I was behind him 100 percent," Barnett said.
    Six months later, Bloom, 19, is the world's No. 1-ranked moguls skier, a leading contender for the Olympic gold medal and one of the best stories of the Salt Lake Games.
    His promising football career at Colorado, along with his freshman classes, are on hold this year and, depending on how he does in the moguls finals Tuesday, perhaps next year, too.
    "If Coach Barnett had said 'No,' that would have been it," Bloom said. "I wouldn't have blamed him. But I would've always asked myself, 'What if?' "
    Said Barnett: "I'd want a coach to make that same decision for my son. The players have really embraced his dreams and ambitions, too. We won't physically be in Salt Lake, but we're with him in spirit."
    Bloom is giddy and a bit disoriented by his stroke of good fortune and complete transformation. One day, he's paying for his lift tickets, having his mother drive him to moguls competitions and struggling to keep up with the Buffalos' offensive linemen in the weight room. The next, he's starring in commercial photo shoots for sponsors, charming the producers of NBC's The Tonight Show and gracing the pages of Teen People and Interview magazines, with the confidence to pose in his boxer shorts, no less.
    Standing 5-foot-9, 155 pounds, with sparkling eyes and a captivating smile, Bloom has blossomed into a bona fide Olympic heartthrob.
    "Jeremy's always calling to tell me to go buy this or that magazine," said his 79-year-old grandfather, Jerry Bloom, who lives in Golden Beach, Fla. "I walked into Barnes & Noble, and the salesclerk said, 'What are you here for now?' I said, 'I'm not buying anything until I make sure he's in there.' When I showed her the picture of Jeremy in his underwear, she said, 'That's your grandson? I won't charge you, if you bring him in.' "
    Bloom's father, Larry, a clinical psychologist and Colorado State University professor, marvels at the metamorphosis.
    "Jeremy's so poised. I see him in interviews and scratch my head. As a kid, he had such separation anxiety, we called him 'Elmer' as in Elmer's Glue.
    "After six events, he's the overall World Cup leader by a large amount. There's only one other U.S. skier in the top 12 (Travis Mayer, in eighth). He's got the talent, the drive and the head for this level of competition."
    Perpetual motion machine
    And, of course, the dramatic flair.
    Moguls, one of the most spectacular winter sports, is contested on a steep ski run littered with snowy bumps. Strategically placed at about the half- and two-thirds points in the run are two upright jumps called airs, which send the skier soaring, allowing him a split-second to do acrobatic tricks.
    Bloom's favorites? The heli iron cross, a 360-degree twist with skis crossed behind him and a quad twister, moving his skis side-to-side four times.
    Seven judges score the run, with 50 percent of the marks for the technical quality of the turns, 25 percent for the two upright jumps and the final 25 percent for the overall speed.
    The youngest of three children, Bloom attacked his first bumps run at 3. His parents, who divorced a few years ago, were passionate about moguls, and Bloom quickly caught the fever. He'd ski the bumps at Keystone decked out in his Superman cape and yellow helmet.
    Off the snow, he'd draw pictures of himself flying through the air on skis, a medal dangling from his neck.
    "Go for the Gold!" he'd scribble beside the doodles. "You can do it! 2002 Olympics!"
    He began studying karate at 4, setting his sights on a black belt and earning it just eight years later.
    "He used to come home crying, and I'd say, 'What's wrong?' " said his mother, Char Bloom, in her 14th year as a ski instructor at Keystone. "He'd say, 'I'm having so much fun with my friends, and now I have to go to karate.' I'd tell him, 'You don't have to go if you don't want to.' And he'd say, 'No, I want my black belt.' "
    When he was 8, Bloom begged his mother to let him play football, but she tried to talk him out of it.
    "We went to the pediatrician for the preseason physical, and he used charts to show me that 75 percent of the kids were taller and heavier than I was," Bloom said. "I figured my mother had put him up to it. I looked at the doctor and said, 'So what? I'm faster!' "
    And willing to work harder.
    Bloom was always in perpetual training mode. He'd jump for hours on the family's backyard trampoline, wearing his skis and ski boots, performing moguls tricks with a safety harness tied around his waist so he wouldn't launch himself into the bushes. He'd insist his father drive him to Ft. Collins, where he'd repeatedly run up Horsetooth Mountain.
    When he was 15, he was named to the freshman football team at Loveland High and the U.S. Ski Team.
    "Everybody told me I couldn't do both. 'You've got a future in skiing. You've got no future in football. You'll get hurt.' That just motivated me to work harder."
    Bloom set nine school records in football and four in track. He led Loveland to the state Class 4A football championship in his senior year, was on the state-champion 4x200-meter relay team as a junior and senior and was second in the 100- and 200-meter dash both years. And, oh yes: He made the honor roll four times, graduating with a 3.2 average.
    Only once did things get a little crazy. After five days at a moguls training camp at Wolf Creek his senior year, Bloom flew home for a day of football practice, then proceeded to haul down a school-record nine catches for 203 yards in a 53-21 victory against Lakewood in a state playoff game. Then, he raced back to ski camp.
    "It wasn't all me. It was the people around me who allowed me to do it," Bloom said. "All it takes is one coach who says, 'You can't.' "
    A whole new world opens up
    Flash to last spring, when Don St. Pierre, the coach of the U.S. Olympic Moguls Ski Team, tossed up a roadblock: Bloom wouldn't get a shot at the 2002 Winter Games. Although Bloom had won the Bumps and Jumps pro circuit and the Nor-Am championship, St. Pierre said specific World Cup criteria had not been met to get Olympic qualifying starts.
    "After four years of being told I wasn't going to go beyond the 'C' team," Bloom says, "I said, 'All right, I'm done with skiing.' "
    After graduating from high school, Bloom poured all his energy into training in Boulder with his Buffalos teammates . Under the direction of Doc Kreis, Colorado's world-renowned strength and conditioning coach, he made remarkable strides in just eight weeks. He lifted weights, replicating the speed and explosiveness he relied on as both a wide receiver and a moguls skier. He worked on balance, hopping on and off boxes, and jumping miniature hurdles. And he worked on stamina, sprinting up hills, forward and backward, wearing a weight vest or a parachute.
    "I had to constantly reassess what I was doing after every workout," Kreis said. "Jeremy was training with people who were larger, faster and older. He wasn't just there to be there; he was there to finish first. That attitude opened up a whole new world for him."
    When Bloom showed up in Chile, he blew his ski coaches' minds. After delaying college, he moved to Park City, Utah, where he lived in the basement of his trainer Chris Marchetti, who followed Kreis' programs and added more moguls-specific training.
    "All I did was eat, sleep and train," Bloom said. "I gave up so much, I didn't want to leave any room for error."
    As promised, in December, St. Pierre gave Bloom the "coach's discretionary" slot at the season-opening World Cup event in Tignes, France. And wouldn't you know it? He finished a career-high third, the day the Buffalos beat Texas in the Big 12 Championship.
    "I was convinced that once he focused on skiing, he'd unlock his true potential. And he has," St. Pierre said.
    If Bloom strikes gold at the Olympics and faces a multimillion-dollar payday, he'll have another gut-wrenching decision to make. NCAA rules prohibit student-athletes from endorsing products. When he enrolls at Colorado, his sponsorships must stop. His skiing contracts state the pacts end at midnight July 31, 2002, because football camp starts the next day.
    Surprisingly, Bloom's not pushing the NCAA for radical changes, because he really wants to play for the Buffalos. He'd like to play for the Denver Broncos, too.
    "If he wins the gold and he's offered seven figures, then we may have to defer for another year," said his agent, Andy Carroll, of Ego Sports Management. "But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. And isn't that a nice problem for a 19-year-old kid to have?"

Copyright 2001 the Coloradoan.
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(updated August 1, 2001).
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