The quirkiness that is the Winter Olympics was captured by a friend who wrote you had to love any sport where you could get your equipment at the hardware store.

But Nordic skiing isn't curling.

You don't just go out and buy a broom. It doesn't matter how fearless or talented an athlete is, or whether they've been blessed with the optimal body type: light enough to ride the wind during a 300-foot drop, yet sinewy enough to push on through 10 miles of snow. No one straps on a pair of skis, practices for a few years, and then launches themselves down a high hill and across an expanse of countryside farther and faster than people who have been doing it for decades.

It only seems that way to a U.S. audience just realizing the start of the Vancouver Olympics is less than a year away.

On Tuesday, Kikkan Randall of Anchorage, Alaska, got passed in the last turn of the women's sprint at the world championships but held on to win a silver. It was America's fifth medal at the championships in the Czech Republic so far, and the first ever by a U.S. woman at the worlds or the Olympics.

Two days earlier, Todd Lodwick grabbed a gold in the Nordic combined — the first of two — and shared the podium with countryman Bill Demong and his bronze. Those two medals equaled the U.S. production in the event at the worlds and Olympics since 1924.

Once hopelessly behind the Germans, Austrians, Russians, Norwegians and Finns, the U.S. Nordic ski team is good enough now that Lindsey Van won a gold in the inaugural women's ski jumping championship — an event that isn't in the Olympics yet, but one the Americans are already well-prepared to compete in. Just in case.

That overnight success was 10 years in the making

"Medals aren't the only measure of success, but they are a function of how many athletes we get within reach of the podium," Jim Scherr, CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said during a telephone call Tuesday.

"There are always great international stories at the Winter Games. But the U.S. public wants to see U.S. athletes, and it's the broadcast back in the States that largely fuels the entire Olympic movement. Our job is to give the broadcasters something to cover ... strong performances by interesting athletes," Scherr paused, "across the board."

He didn't want to be boxed in by a prediction, at least not yet. But with sponsors determined to get maximum bang for their buck in tough economic times, Scherr knows the pressure to perform is on.

He acknowledged the all-time U.S. yield of 34 winter medals (10 golds) at Salt Lake City in 2002 was "beyond expectations, mostly because a lot of things fell right." The 25 (nine golds) at Torino the last time out "was a good number, too, even though we had a lot of fourths.

"But the competition is so much more difficult, with more nations winning than ever before," Scherr said. "The number in Torino will be tough to match, but we'll have enough athletes within range of the podium, like the last two games.

"Whether we'll ultimately be happy with something bigger or smaller than that," Scherr added, "I'm still not ready to say."

Events get added to just about every Olympic program to ratchet up the TV audience, even though it stretches the budgets of the traditional powers and those nations, like China, who aim to be. But Nordic skiing isn't snowboarding, either, a sport in which Americans had a big headstart, organized quickly and began reaping the rewards almost immediately.

The U.S. Nordic team's slow ascent began at a meeting in the spring of 1999, amid promises that resources would continue flowing, regardless of results. At the time, it looked like pouring good money after bad; Bill Koch's silver in cross-country at the 1976 Games, the only Olympic medal the U.S. team ever won, kept receding in the rearview mirror.

"We'd give one thing a try and two years later, something else," recalled Luke Bodensteiner, a former Nordic competitor and team director who now works for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. "But when we sat down and looked at all the factors, we realized it takes 10 years, minimum, to develop a champion. It was the only realistic way to get there."

What followed was enough funding from the USSA budget so Nordic coaches could recruit, travel, train, equip and retain athletes like their Alpine counterparts. They built atop an infrastructure of small-town clubs and volunteer coaches and set up shop full-time in Park City, where the Salt Lake Games organizers left a plastic coating on the jumping hill and paved over the cross-country track, making summer workouts possible.

"It's not a sport where you turn a switch or crack a code and suddenly become great," Bodensteiner chuckled. "Nordic skiers have to put in the time — day by day, mile by mile."

Lodwick's story is instructive that way. He joined the Nordic team in 1994 as a 16-year-old, but never quite delivered on that promise. He hung up his skis in 2006 to try the real estate business and spend more time with his family. A year ago, he realized something special was taking shape and returned to the gym in May.

"We were banging on the door," Scherr said, "and here was a guy who had come so close and stayed so long ... that let's just say it's rewarding to see where Todd is now.

"Surprised?" he repeated a question. "Not really. He worked for it, then he started over and worked for it again. There's no such thing as an overnight success story in this business."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org