Anchorage Daily News

The Olympics celebrates sport and competition, but everyone knows that the Olympians celebrated most are those whose medals come with gripping personal stories that almost overshadow their physical achievements.

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Alaska will boast three athletes when the Olympics come to China for the first time this week, and all three have stories worth telling.

One, that of basketball star Carlos Boozer of Juneau, 26, is already well known.

Another, that of rifle marksman Matt Emmons of Fairbanks, 27, may have been embellished amid all the pre-Olympic hype, but is close enough to the truth to perpetuate.

The third, that of trapshooter Corey Cogdell of Eagle River, 21, is known only by those familiar with her and her low-profile sport, but is full of heart-tugging moments a screenwriter would love. All it needs is a climactic scene where a medal gets draped around the heroine's neck.

It could happen.

All three Alaskans have proven themselves in previous international competition and all are expected to contend for medals when the Olympics go to China for the first time.

Boozer and Emmons already own Olympic medals, and Cogdell has won medals in World Cup competitions that feature the same athletes she'll face in Beijing.

The games begin Friday with the lighting of the Olympic cauldron during opening ceremonies. The flame goes out Aug. 24, and by then a couple Alaskans could be wearing medals.

CARLOS BOOZER

Carlos Boozer pays homage to his Alaska roots with a tattoo of a grizzly bear on one forearm.

He used to be a Crimson Bear at Juneau-Douglas High, where he won a couple of state championships and earned a basketball scholarship to Duke University.

Now he's a star for the Utah Jazz of the NBA and a player for a United States team that has something to prove in Beijing.

His storyline has already been dictated by NBC.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Boozer and some of the NBA's biggest studs -- LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, DeWayne Wade -- picked up the bronze medal instead of the gold that is considered an American birthright.

And so this year's team has been dubbed the Redeem Team, a play on the Dream Team of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson that took the Olympics by storm in 1992. Anyone who knows anything about basketball knows it's time for Boozer and the gang -- which this time includes Kobe Bryant, as well as James, Anthony and Wade -- to make amends for the recent past.

James recently guaranteed the team would win gold, and Boozer is OK with that.

"We all believe we're going to win the gold medal, so for him to go out there and say that put the pressure on us to go out and compete at a high level," Boozer said at a recent press conference. "I'm looking forward to that."

The United States is 4-0 in pre-Olympic games and Boozer has played in all of them, although he isn't a starter. Experts are calling this the best team since the original Dream Team. If they are even close to being right, Boozer could soon turn bronze into gold.

The Americans open with a game Sunday against host China and one of its great national heroes, Yao Ming. The gold-medal game is Aug. 24.

MATT EMMONS

You might think you know the storyline for Matt Emmons:

The former University of Alaska Fairbanks marksman won a gold medal in prone rifle shooting at the 2004 Olympics and was one shot away from claiming a second gold medal in three-position rifle shooting.

On his final shot, he cross-fired. Hit the wrong target. Goodbye, medal. Hello, misery.

A heck of a story, especially if he comes back this year and gets the double victory that eluded him last time. He qualified in both events -- and just missed qualifying in air pistol -- and is among the favorites in both events.

But an item in a recent Sports Illustrated provided a new angle to the Matt Emmons story.

After the cross-firing incident, the magazine reported, a shooter named Katy Kurkova from the Czech Republic was so impressed with the class Emmons showed amid disaster that she introduced herself and complimented him for his poise.

Today, they are husband and wife.

Talk about a great story: Man loses gold medal, but gets gold wedding band.

Except it might not be true.

"I think they knew each other before that," said Randy Pitney, who coached Emmons at UAF. "But she definitely came over to talk to him after that, as did many people."

Even if the target mishap didn't bring Emmons and his bride together, it may have inspired Emmons to remain in the sport long enough to compete for another medal.

"I think it kept him shooting for these Olympics," Pitney said.

Emmons lists both Fairbanks and Browns Mill, N.J., where he grew up, as his hometowns. He'll be in Fairbanks in late September to be inducted into the Nanook Hall of Fame, and he has talked about moving to Fairbanks permanently when he retires from competition. Those plans could change now that he's married, Pitney said.

Another former member of the UAF riflery team, Jamie Beyerle, will also compete in Beijing.

COREY COGDELL

Corey Cogdell is the perfect Alaska woman. She hunts, fishes and knows how to fashion blinders for her goggles out of duct tape, yet she cleans up so nicely that last week she was the cover girl on the U.S. Olympic Committee's home page.

Her dad is pure Alaska too. He's a former heavy equipment operator who lives to fish and who'd like to watch his daughter on NBC's live stream coverage of trapshooting, except he doesn't have a computer.

What Dick Cogdell does have is supreme confidence in his daughter.

"I think we're gonna see that girl win the gold medal," he said. "What an accomplishment that would be."

It would be no less an accomplishment than what the Cogdells have already done. Theirs is a story of loss, love and perseverance.

Corey was 9 and her sister Tanis was 11 in 1996 when their mother, Wendy, was biking with a friend along the path that parallels the Glenn Highway between Anchorage and Eagle River. A car smashed into a light pole, flew over the embankment, landed on the path and killed Wendy instantly.

"The next day I called my boss and quit my job. I decided to raise my daughters," Dick said.

Wendy had home-schooled the girls, so Dick took over the teaching chores. Today Tanis is a neo-natal nurse in Texas and Corey is pursuing her love of shooting, something she was good at even as a toddler, when she could hit a spruce hen at 75 yards.

Though a competitive shooter as a teenager, Corey didn't pick up international trapshooting until a couple of years ago.

"I never had an Olympic dream till two years ago," she said during a visit home this summer.

At first, that dream revolved around the 2012 Olympics. No one thought Cogdell could master international trapshooting quickly enough to contend for the 2008 team.

Now she's not only a member of the team, she's a legitimate contender for a medal. In about 70 percent of her international competitions, Cogdell has qualified for the six-person finals.

Cogdell is shooting well during training in Korea, where the U.S. shooting team is staying until later this week. Dick Cogdell talked to his daughter over the weekend and said she's excited about what awaits in Beijing.

"But as much as she's happy to be there, she wishes she was here right now," Dick said Sunday afternoon. "As we speak, I am filleting silvers. And she loves to fish."

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

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