Holcomb learned to ski when he was 2 years old. He was born in
Park City, Utah, where his mother would take him skiing at every opportunity. He began ski racing when he was six at the main resort of Park City, and began ski racing for the Park City Ski Team for the following twelve years. During this time he was also an athlete in local sports, playing soccer, football, basketball, baseball, and running track. In 1998 he participated in a local USA bobsled team try-out and scored enough points to be invited to the National Team Camp, which included the National Push Championships. He finished in eighth place and was invited to stay for an additional week to train with the National Team. Despite his eighth-place finish, which qualified him for the national team, he was not selected because of his small stature and young age. After placing 5th at the National Team Trials in early October 1998 at the
Utah Olympic Park, he chose to attend the
University of Utah. Shortly following the naming of the American 1998
IBSF Bobsleigh World Cup team, an injury caused the withdrawal of one member. On November 3, 1998, he was asked to join the World Cup team in
Calgary,
Alberta, for the first World Cup race, where he pushed for driver
Brian Shimer. He then went on to have an above average career as a pusher for drivers Jim Herberich, Mike Dionne,
Todd Hays, and Brian Shimer. Shortly before the
2002 Winter Olympics, Holcomb was cut from Brian Shimer's team, and replaced with Dan Steele, a veteran from the
1998 Winter Olympics. At the Utah Olympic Park for the 2002 Winter Olympics, he served as a bobsled forerunner, who tests the bobsled course prior to competition. Starting with the 2004–2005 season, he achieved second and third ranked American driver. Holcomb left the military with an honorable discharge in June 2006, and focused on competition on the World Cup circuit. This led to immediate results in the
2006–07 season, where Holcomb (with team members Jovanovic and Kreitzburg) won the two-man World Cup Championship, while he finished second in the four-man competition (with Jovanovic, Kreitzburg, and Mesler), which earned Holcomb the overall Combined Championship. As Holcomb rose through the ranks of American bobsledders, the degenerative eye disease
Keratoconus, initially diagnosed in 2002, began to affect his daily life and competitive skills, which led to depression. In 2007, a non-invasive surgical procedure,
corneal collagen cross-linking (C3-R), was performed to stabilize the disease, and in 2008 implantable corrective lenses were inserted, providing a measure of correction during the
2007–08 Bobsleigh World Cup season; he led his teams to three gold, three silver, and one bronze medals over that season. After Holcomb won gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Brian Boxer Wachler renamed the procedure C3-R to Holcomb C3-R, marking the first time a medical procedure was named after an Olympic athlete. ==Career==