Two years after announcing his retirement, Steve Langton had a change of heart. Already a two-time bronze medalist, the Olympic bobsledder had gold on his mind: “I don’t have one of those,” he tells Us Weekly exclusively. “I knew that I could.”
Langton, 34, officially came out of retirement last year and began training for the 2018 Winter Olympics held in PyeongChang, South Korea. “I realized this is probably the last time I can be the very best at what I do,” he says. “[Winning a gold medal] would mean that I made the right decision. It would mean a lot. I think everyone is given gifts, and I’m very good at pushing sleds in a straight line and I want to use that.”
But the athlete insists this year’s games are his last go-round. “I said that four years ago, but this is absolute,” he tells Us. “Now I really, really mean it.”
After all, retirement had its perks. Rather than becoming a couch potato, Langton continued to be active and even competed on The Amazing Race in 2015 with his then-girlfriend, fellow Olympian Alyson Dudek. “I was doing a lot of road biking and my work capacity was high,” he says, adding that he would compete on the CBS reality series again “in a heartbeat.”
For now, though, Langton is preparing for his final competition, and he hopes to win in honor of fellow bobsledder Steven Holcomb, who was found dead at age 37 in May 2017 due to a fatal combination of prescription sleeping pills and alcohol.
“I will always miss my friend and teammate, but he wants us to go to the Olympics and he would want us to win medals,” the Northeastern University graduate tells Us. “We’re gonna do everything we possibly can do to make that happen.”
To learn more about Langton, visit teamusa.org. The Olympics air on NBC.
With reporting by Carly Sloane and Mandie DeCamp.
