Going for the gold? Done. Going back for more? Nine Minnesotans embrace that task

BEIJING — Four years after the Pyeongchang Winter Games, Minnesota's gold medal moments live on in video form. NBC has put them front and center in its promotional ads for the Beijing Olympics: John Shuster's fist pump at the curling venue, Jessie Diggins' mighty roar on the cross-country course, the U.S. women's hockey team flinging its sticks and gloves in mass celebration.

As much as Shuster cherishes the memory, those clips don't take him back to the past. They prod him to think about what lies ahead.

"I'm glad I'm part of that video,'' the Chisholm native said. "But it just makes me that much more excited to get a chance to go back again and go after that Olympic dream.''

Only a select few will ever know the feeling of winning Olympic gold, as 12 athletes with Minnesota ties did at the 2018 Winter Games. Fewer still earn the opportunity to try again four years later.

Nine of those Minnesotans will get another shot beginning Friday, when the curtain officially rises on the Beijing Olympics. Shuster and teammate John Landsteiner of Duluth will defend their Olympic title in men's curling. Diggins, the Afton native who won the cross-country team sprint in Pyeongchang, is among the medal contenders in several events. The U.S. women's hockey team returns six players with state ties from the team that beat Canada in the 2018 Olympic final.

The Minnesotans' medals in Pyeongchang all ended long American droughts. The curling and cross-country golds were the first for the U.S. in those sports. The women's hockey team had not won Olympic gold since 1998, when the sport made its Winter Games debut.

As defending Olympic champions, all of them will be in a unique position this time around. While they can't re-create the feeling of their first Winter Games victories, they hope to make winning gold a twice-in-a-lifetime experience.

Diggins' victory with teammate Kikkan Randall generated one of the viral moments of the Pyeongchang Games. As she chased down leader Stina Nilsson of Sweden in the final meters, announcer Chad Salmela hollered, "Here comes Diggins! Here comes Diggins!" That video clip has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, but its subject hasn't revisited it in quite a while.

Diggins doesn't keep her gold medal close. It resides in her parents' basement, and Diggins said she thinks about that night in Pyeongchang only when someone else brings it up. Instead, she thinks about some advice a former coach gave her: to view every experience in life as a singular event, unique to that moment.

"I think that's so important to remember,'' Diggins said. "[Beijing is] not the same as Pyeongchang, and that's OK. It's going to be like the first time I've ever been to an Olympics, because it's different trails, different country, different year, different Jessie.

"I don't have to go in there defending anything. Nothing makes that medal and what I did four years ago disappear. And I don't disappear if I don't do it again.''

The U.S. women's hockey team is also not the same as it was in 2018, when it defeated Canada 3-2 in a shootout in the gold medal game. That's helping it approach these Olympics with a fresh perspective.

Pannek, one of eight current or former Gophers on the U.S. team for Beijing, said young newcomers have injected energy — and some extra grit — into the roster. And the ongoing rivalry with Canada means neither team can rest on past success. Though the U.S. has the Olympic gold, Canada defeated the Americans 3-2 in overtime in the final at last summer's world championships.

According to Pannek, that ensured the U.S. will come into the Beijing Olympics with the same hunger it had in 2018.

"After getting silver in the world championships in August, that leaves a bitter taste in our mouth,'' she said. "When we're at our best, we still play with a chip on our shoulder, like we have something to prove. I think that's kind of what our identity is.''

Another former Gopher, Hannah Brandt of Vadnais Heights, said the U.S. has plenty of familiarity with being the team others are trying to dethrone. Before last summer's loss, the Americans won gold at five consecutive world championships from 2013-19.

"We're going into this year with a target on our backs, but we're kind of used to that,'' Brandt said. "I think we always have something to prove. The goal is to defend that gold medal.''

The group had one lineup change when Tyler George took a break from the sport, leaving a spot filled by Chris Plys. Shuster would like to avoid some of the drama from 2018, when the U.S. was on the brink of elimination in the round robin before a late run to gold. But his team has tried to replicate most everything else that led to a victory over Sweden in the final match.

"Our preparation for the last Olympics gives us confidence that that is the preparation we need to be putting in again,'' Shuster said. "Being successful was a process.

"We haven't rested on our laurels at all. And we've continued to grow, trying to find the little tiny ways to get better.''

Several of the Minnesotans said that being a returning gold medalist doesn't generate any more pressure than they felt in 2018. Any time they wear the U.S. uniform, they feel a responsibility to represent it to the best of their ability, and to give American fans something to cheer about.

Striking gold twice would certainly do that.