I had spent my entire life focusing on this one thing, and now this one thing was gone.

I mean, I accomplished it, but regardless, this one thing is gone, and now what am I going to do?

You're listening to How To. I'm Amanda Ripley.

The 2022 Olympic flame has been extinguished in Beijing, and with it, the dreams of Olympic glory for many athletes.

The biggest stories of these games included some painful moments, watching a 15-year-old figure skater fall apart on the ice,

were the shocking results for downhill skier, Michaela Schifrin, the face of Team USA, who didn't even finish multiple events.

You have got to be kidding me.

Shocker right off the bat, didn't even get into the course.

It's all a reminder of the incredible pressure that humans put themselves under, and even if everything goes right and you win gold,

the all-consuming pursuit to get there can leave athletes wondering, what comes next?

So today we're revisiting a fascinating conversation with a winter Olympian who won gold, and then discovered not everything is golden after the games are over.

My name is Steve Messler. I am the 2010 Olympic gold medalist in the sport of format in Bob's Lead.

Steve spoke with former How To host David Epstein, and we'll let him take it from here.

The first time I met Steve was before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, at a media event.

Steve and his teammates were throwing pens at one another across the room, and I thought, well these guys seem like fun.

So then I paid them a visit in Placid to write about them for sports illustrated.

And Steve and I later became really close friends.

I had my first Bob's Lead trip when I was writing about you guys, and Jerks didn't tell me to put my head down in the sled.

So I was wobbling all over the place.

It's like a great roller coaster.

And roller coasters like Accelerate and decelerate, whereas my experience with the Bob's Lead was it only accelerates.

Until the end when someone pulls them right.

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