Boarder Chris Klug giving back after 2002 Olympic glory

PARK CITY — Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Salt Lake Olympics gives everyone a chance to dust off their favorite 2002 moment.

Mine involves remembering a picture-perfect Valentine's Day at Park City, where snowboard racer Chris Klug laid down the crowning run of the Games.

Klug didn't win gold, or silver, but the bronze medal he captured easily qualified as the emotional apex of the 2002 Games.

It was the first Olympic medal ever won by an athlete after an organ transplant.

And it came on National Donor Day.

Chris Klug had established himself as a definite medal possibility in parallel giant slalom snowboard racing when he finished sixth in his first Olympics in Nagano in 1998 — especially with the next Olympics scheduled for the Utah mountains, no more than a six-hour drive from his home in Aspen, Colo.

But that contender status came with an asterisk. In 1994, during a routine physical exam, doctors had discovered that Klug had a rare autoimmune liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis. It was dormant at the time, but if it accelerated, no matter how fit he was or how hard he trained, it could easily, and quickly, take his life. In 1999, football legend Walter Payton died of the same disease at the age of 45.

There was only one way to treat PSC — with a liver transplant.

Klug hoped such a need would never come, but in April 2000, as he was preparing in earnest for the Salt Lake Games, his liver started shutting down. By May he was fighting for his life. He became a contender on an entirely different list — the long line of desperate people waiting for a donor organ.

After 72 days, with his life draining out of him, a call came on July 28, 2000, from University Hospital in Denver. A 13-year-old boy who died that day from a gunshot wound had donated all his organs. It appeared his liver was a perfect match for Chris.

Just before he went under, Chris asked his transplant surgeon, Dr. Igal Kam, "Doc, the Olympics are less than two years away. If this turns out well, is it possible?"

The surgeon answered truthfully, "I don't know — it's never been done before."

Klug knew the operation was a success the moment he woke up.