As he ran, Jack Hess held his arms down and a little out from his body, like a man crossing a high wire. His snowshoes, cut-down versions of the old wood-and-sinew trail shoes, zipped low over the glazed, slippery surface of the Kincaid Park oval. A chill wind ruffled his close-cropped, fair hair. He had settled into third place near the start of his 400-meter division final on Wednesday, and that's where he crossed the finish line, the Canadian flag stenciled on his left cheek seeming to billow as he breathed. He walked off the track smiling and nodding to himself, as if everything had gone exactly as he'd expected.

"They're enjoying themselves," said Doug Castor, head coach of the Canadian Special Olympics snowshoeing squad. "Sometimes this is stressful for the athletes. . . . We really work on getting them together as a team and as a family."

On the team, Hess is a steady performer. Wednesday, he won a gold medal in his division of the 100 meters to go with his bronze in the 400. In the family, he is, at 34, a sort of wisecracking older brother.

"We got to see Arnold yesterday," he told me on Monday. "I got to shake his hand. Nice man." Grin. "He's not as big as he is on TV."

Hess is from Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he lives with his wife, Ramona, a former Special Olympics gymnast. They have an 8-year-old daughter, Amy Elizabeth, who is in the third grade.

"I call her Daddy's little Beanie Baby," he said. "She keeps us both going."

Hess works a 4 p.m.-to-8 p.m. shift at the local Safeway, cleaning up in the bakery. His wife is a file clerk at the Legal Aid office. They receive social assistance, he said, to help with their expenses and the rent on their apartment.

He trains three times a week with several other members of the snowshoeing team. He got into sports in high school.

"One of my friends, he went to a track club and invited me along," Hess said. "I tried it. I liked it."

In his 17 years as a Special Olympics athlete, Hess has competed in track and field, swimming, floor hockey, and cross-country and Alpine skiing.

"I've done almost every sport they have in Canada," he said.

He has been to several national competitions and "I was in Austria in 1993, when I did Alpine skiing. I was predicted to bring home nothing and I got two bronze and a seventh place." He did all that even though "I fractured my ankle 10 weeks before we were due to leave."

These days, Hess's physique is more like that of a man who works in a bakery than that of a lifelong athlete. But then, at these Games there is no typical athlete. They come in all ages, shapes, sizes, degrees of mental disability and personality types. They are as flamboyant as Ward Kostello, whom his teammates call "The Big Tree," a strapping 33-year-old from Ontario with a close-cut, red-dyed Mohawk. They are as quiet as Lindsay Onsowich, a shy, diminutive 16-year-old from Manitoba.

What they seem to have in common is what drew Jack Hess: "The thrill of winning. Competition. The many friends that I met."

For Hess, this is an appeal that never wavers.

"I want to go as long as I can go. I want to last until I'm 100."

Not long after his race ended, there was an awards ceremony. When his name was called for the bronze medal, Hess stepped up onto the platform and raised his arms, fists clenched, above his head.