What can kids learn from this Olympic champion, and ill-fated TV star?

What can kids learn from this Olympic champion, and ill-fated TV star?

Key points

• Coach Keller created arrangements for O'Brien to run at Spokane Community College under coach Duane Hartman.
• Although O'Brien always considered Johnson, regarding three years older than him, a mentor, the competition for the 1992 Olympics was on.
• University of Idaho track coach Mike Keller wouldn't leave O'Brien's kitchen in Klamath Falls until he signed a letter of intent.
• Looking back, O'Brien feels like every up and down, every interaction, was preparing him for what happened in 1996.
• There, he met Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the American who would win two golds that summer, and something clicked inside of him.

What can kids learn from this Olympic champion, and ill-fated TV star? Stephen Borelli USA TODAY. Coach Steve's new book guides parents through youth sports.

USA TODAY Sports' Steve Borelli (a.k.a. Coach Steve) has a new book to support parents through the tough moments parents face when their kids play sports. Obtain your copy here: Coachsteve.usatbook.com. COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – Do you like Dan or Dave?

Reebok wanted you to pick a side. It was early 1992, and the shoe firm rolled out a bold campaign by putting two virtually unknown decathletes all over America's television screens, starting with the Super Bowl.

"I'm unstoppable, but, uh oh, something happens, " say Dan O'Brien, the former American decathlete remembering how he was on top of the world heading into that summer. "I look back on it, and I understand why it happened and how it happened."

O'Brien, at the peak of his powers, stumbled at the Olympic trials. He didn't create the U.S. Team. While Dave Johnson went to Barcelona, Spain, O'Brien fled to his apartment in Moscow, Idaho.

"You're just like, 'How on earth did this happen?'" O'Brien notes. "Since you put so much into it, and not just the time on the track, but you dream concerning it, you think regarding it. You obsess over it. And when it doesn't happen, then you're like, 'OK, what am I doing wrong?' And that's the moment that you personally have to take ownership."

As we struggle or others catch up, it's a story that hits home for plenty of of us: We're really good at something like a sport and then, we're not. What we do next can shape the rest of our lives.

O'Brien, who discovered something more inside of himself after failing during two significant moments of his, went on to future glory at one of the Olympics' most arduous events. He spoke with USA TODAY Sports on the occasion of a new U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum exhibit here that was his idea and inspiration.

"A Legacy of Victory: U.S. Olympic Decathletes, " which O'Brien supported design, highlights the legacy of U.S. Olympic decathletes, who have won 27 medals at it, and what it takes to compete throughout 10 events over two days.

"The perseverance part, I think, was just natural for me, " notes O'Brien, 60. "I lost a lot of Little League games. We lost in the (state) semifinals my senior year in high school football, and we were, by far, the best team. And when I saw other individuals broken down by failures, that's just when I secured better."

He had support from a few significant coaches. This person carefully guided O'Brien but then let him do the work to figure out his journey. He spoke with us his regarding road to becoming "World's Greatest Athlete" and how his story can assist your young athlete build resilience.

Things can come easily for us, but, if we pursue them and obtain good at them, they become a lot harder. How do we react?

O'Brien thinks he was born with speed. He notes he could outrun everyone in his fifth grade physical education class for 50 yards. Then he beat the fastest sixth grader at lunch.

That school year, he won the first race he ever entered, at a homecoming football game, outsprinting another kid in a one-mile fun run to the line. O'Brien, adopted into a sizeable family that operated a farm in Klamath Falls, Oregon, remembers telling his mom in high school: "I'm leaving this farm, and I'm never gonna work this hard again." She laughed and stated, "You're gonna spend your whole life working."

His mother had a rule he couldn't obtain a grade lower than a "C, " and he had a "D" in social studies his freshman year of high school. But his pottery teacher, Larry Hunt, additionally the high school track & field coach, offered to assist him obtain his grades up, and he introduced him to the decathlon.

Meanwhile, the Olympic decathlon champion is additionally sometimes referred to as the "World's Greatest Athlete." He has the highest cumulative score over a 100-meter dash, long lump, shot put, high jump, 400-meter run, 110-meter hurdles, discus and javelin throws, and pole vault and 1, 500-meter run.

"I remember doing that first decathlon, just thinking, brother, I'm never doing this again, " O'Brien notes. "Well, the next year rolled around, and I did it again, and so I did one decathlon each year in high school, till I was a senior, and then I qualified for the junior Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984."

"I just signed the best guy I've ever signed, " Keller confirmed at the time.

But O'Brien notes he wasn't prepared for Division 1 college academics. He lost his scholarship.

He obtained a job in a cabinet making store in Moscow, Idaho, knowing the trade as of all that hard work his mother did around the farmhouse.

It paid well but, O'Brien notes, "no 20 year old wants to be waking up for a 7 o'clock job."

He remembers going to track at the University Idaho, watching, and thinking: How do I obtain back? When his contract changed, and he lost the job, he remembers knocking on Coach Keller's door on a cold, snowy day. How do I get back in school? he asked.

"I think if I don't go to his house that day, then who knows where I end up?" O'Brien notes.

More Coach Steve: How a coach can support produce or break your kid's sports experience.

We can learn a lot from athletes on the other side, and the ones who come before us.

Coach Keller created arrangements for O'Brien to run at Spokane Community College under coach Duane Hartman. Within an hour of session Hartman, O'Brien had a job in the cafeteria, a place to stay and a third man who saw something in him.

"He just had so much belief in me, " O'Brien notes. "He even had too much belief in me at times."

It's what every young athlete needs. O'Brien worked his way back to Keller and Idaho by the end of his college career, and he teamed with Rick Sloan at neighboring Washington State for field events. The steps began coming.

Looking back, O'Brien feels like every up and down, every interaction, was preparing him for what happened in 1996. He qualified for the 1988 Olympic trials while still in junior college, then qualified for the Olympic trials in Indianapolis.

"This is what I'm here for, is to do the decathlon, " he remembers telling himself.

Trust me, he continues, I tried to obtain out of it, tried to run faster in the hurdles, tried to long jump better. In a two-day period, you're gonna be exhausted. You're gonna be tested, you're gonna be tried. You're gonna have to push yourself, maybe, someplace you've never gone physically, mentally, and you stress regarding that a little bit. And by the time you obtain to the end, you can't explain the fatigue. To bend down and tie your shoes is somewhat of an effort, but then when the gun goes off in the 1500, you find the will to race. But it's such a freeing feeling of crossing the finish line, finishing 10 events.

"Doing a decathlon is like driving all night when you're tired."

He learned to find levity by having fun with his opponents, talking to them during the two-hour breaks in between events. He spent a lot of time on the practice track and in the warmup areas with guys from worldwide, drawing fuel from the knowledge they were "brothers in combat" just for competing in the event.

O'Brien, now the top collegiate decathlete in the country, obtained injured in 1989, but remembers doing testing that year at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, and finding himself off to the side with Dave Johnson. This person would win the U.S. Championship that year.

"You're a guy that I'm looking at, " Johnson informed him. "You're somebody who's gonna be really, really good." "I didn't even think he knew who I was, " O'Brien thought. How can we find strength in our biggest failures?

O'Brien finished second to Johnson nationally in 1990 and won it all in 1991, going from scoring 8, 000 to 8, 400 to more than 8, 800 (breaking Bruce Jenner's American record) over three years.

"The media pitted us as rivals, but we were good friends, " O'Brien notes. "We were going into this thing together."

Taken together, the developments around what can kids learn from this Olympic champion, and ill point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.