Even if the Bates Township native didn’t have the epic story to tell of his racing to the mixed snowboard cross gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, he could still woo an audience with his energy, his passion and his good-natured charm.

Case in point, his retelling — nearly four years later — of the life-changing run that left him and partner Lindsey Jacobellis at the top of the standings that February day.

“I knew the people I was competing against,” the 42-year-old Baumgartner begins, his voice revving up and his words beginning to pour out in torrents. “Before the race, I joked with the kid (Eliot Grondin of Canada) that I knew would win the start. I said, ‘Eliot, don’t go doing something stupid by getting too far ahead of me so that I can’t draft.’

“So we start and I’m in third place and I settled. And I end up passing into second right away, but Eliot’s gone. I mean, he’s 50, 60 feet in front of us, maybe even more.

THE COVER OF Nick Baumgartner’s recently published memoir, “Gold From Iron: A Humble Beginning, Olympic Dreams, and the Power in Getting Back Up.” The 2022 mixed snowboard cross Olympic gold medalist from Iron County teamed with Detroit Free Press sports columnist Jeff Seidel on the book, published by Triumph Books of Chicago and released Jan. 9.

“And I’m settled in, and I tucked down and got directly behind him. I was right at the end of (the draft) and I just slowly drug him in, drug him in. And then I got to this jump section where everybody saw me pass him. And everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god, you defied gravity! He went so high and you went so low!’

“The reason why that happened is he’s breaking the wind; he had to jump to clear it. I’m coming out of the draft like a slingshot, and I was able to go low.

“But the jump where I passed him is where I made a little mistake in the individual race. I ended up getting passed and having bad things happen two turns later.

“So I was like, OK, I can’t do that again. So I hit it, landed perfectly and took off in front of those guys. I came around the last turn and I know that it’s so tight these guys are going to draft me. But I knew from the test event we ran in November that this was a big part of the race.

“I knew that was a pump section (section with small tight hills) all the way to the finish line. So that is why I came home (after the test run) and built a track around my house. And everybody thought I was crazy. And I did that because I knew I needed to have my legs strong, and I knew I needed to be able to pump (to generate speed).

“It took me 30 hours to build that track.”

Talk to Baumgartner for an hour or so and you get one tale like this after another. Snowboarding stories, fishing stories, surfing stories, hardship stories of sacrifices necessary to excel, light-hearted stories about his family, you name it.

Now, those stories are available in Baumgartner’s recently published memoir, “Gold From Iron: A Humble Beginning, Olympic Dreams, and the Power in Getting Back Up,” published by Triumph Books of Chicago and released Jan. 9.

Baumgartner teamed with Detroit Free Press sports columnist Jeff Seidel to bring his life story to the public. Baumgartner regales the reader with his “daring and improbable story of Olympic gold from blue-collar origins.”

The book is meant to appeal to all, from the world famous to the small-town kid in the U.P.

Commenting for Baumgartner’s book, swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated U.S. Olympian of all time, said, “Nick is incredible. His journey to Olympic gold at 40 is nothing short of amazing. Like him, his story is funny, heartwarming and inspiring.”

Well-known professional skateboarder and entrepreneur Tony Hawk added, “Nick Baumgartner is a living example of determination and perseverance … A humble hero!”

Fittingly, the book reads as if Baumgartner is talking directly to the reader.

About a month after Baumgartner won his long-sought-after gold — he’d been in three Olympics before the 2022 games — his public relations team contacted sports agent Carrie Goldberg Trutanich of Hermosa Beach, Calif., to see if there was interest in a book about Baumgartner’s story.

Triumph Books, a leading sports book publisher with a catalogue that includes biographies and memoirs to collectible keepsakes that celebrate Super Bowls, World Series and Stanley Cups, expressed interest.

Triumph Books gave him his first assignment shortly after: Find a ghostwriter.

“I’m like, ‘No, I’m a snowboarder,'” Baumgartner said. “I don’t know any ghostwriters.”

As he further pondered the question, Baumgartner recalled an article written after he took fourth in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with his son, Landon, in attendance.

“I said, ‘I know a guy that wrote the best article about me ever.’ So, I was like, maybe he would be interested.”

That guy was Seidel, whose work has appeared in the USA Today, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

When asked, Seidel jumped on board immediately.

“Not only was he interested, but you could feel and you could see the passion, how bad he wanted to do this project,” Baumgartner said.

As he began telling his stories to Seidel, Baumgartner said he knew he had the perfect writer for his memoir.

“Just watching how excited he was. He was on the edge of his seat, saying, ‘Are you kidding me?!” That happened?!”

Initially the two communicated through a few phone calls and then began to meet in person from time to time. Seidel traveled from his Detroit-area home to Iron River to see Landon’s commencement speech at the West Iron County Class of 2022 graduation.

A few months later, Baumgartner and Landon traveled to Detroit to spend Thanksgiving with Seidel and his family.

“The good thing is that we’re very similar,” Nick said. “He loves sports, he’s a super-cool guy and he’s passionate, so we hit it off.”

Baumgartner started to share his stories with Seidel, one following another. In listening to Baumgartner riffle through his tales, Seidel began to envision an enjoyable read.

The two at first would talk, but soon enough Nick would go radio silent.

“And then he’d have to get back on me, saying, ‘Hey, we’re doing something here.’ It was like herding a cat, trying to keep me focused and going forward.”

But the communication became more consistent when the two scheduled more in-person get-togethers.

Eventually, the pair began a process of elimination, choosing which stories would go in and which would not. Though the stories tumbled out of Baumgartner one after another, at a certain point his publishing team at Triumph Books said no more.

“They said we can change wording and we can change sentences here and there, but there’s no more adding stories,” Nick said.

The material that was first sent did not impress Nick’s mom, Mary.

“She started reading it and she was like, ‘There’s all these misspellings and (poor word choices).’ And I was like, ‘Mom, don’t worry about the grammar, that’s not our gig. They’ve got a whole grammar team that’s going to fix that.'”

Baumgartner said he received the first manuscript in a digital file to read last spring. The editing process continued, though there was a hitch.

“I was like, ‘This is taking way too long to read this book. Here I am, driving all over everywhere. I need to be able to listen to this.’ So, I got Speechify and I put the file onto there and I listened to it.

“I was able to listen to it way quicker. So now, instead of a week or two weeks it took me to read it, in six hours of driving it was done.”

With the interviewing, reading, editing and publishing complete and the book now available through Triumph Books and such outlets as Amazon, Baumgartner hopes that his story and life lessons will reach a wide audience.

And as is his way, Baumgartner is ready to go full force into getting the books into people’s hands.

“I’m going to do it the old-fashioned way. I’m going to hit the road this summer with books in my truck and I’m going to meet the people. And I’m going to shake the hands and I’m going to take pictures with the kids. I’m going to do that.

“And I hope people like it. I poured my heart and soul into those pages.”

As if Baumgartner would do it any other way.

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