SAUZE d'OULX, Italy — At some point, Toby Dawson wants to find his parents, the ones who left him on the streets of South Korea so long ago.
People over there have been helping with the search, and several leads have come up, but the 27-year-old put his quest aside for a more pressing matter.
Skiing in the 2006 Turin Games.
"It's very emotional," he said. "I didn't want to know until after these Olympics."
On Wednesday, Dawson took care of the task at hand, winning bronze in a men's moguls competition full of sparkling performances and intriguing story lines.
Dale Begg-Smith, a Canadian who switched allegiances to Australia five years ago, continued his recent domination of the sport by winning the event.
And Jeremy Bloom -- whose otherworldly resume includes college football star and fashion model -- failed to make the podium in what may have been his last ski competition. He will now rush off to take a shot at the NFL.
But in the twilight here, no tale was more compelling than that of Dawson, the young man from Vail, Colo. As his adoptive mother, Deborah, said: "It's like a dream come true."
Only no one knows exactly how or when the dream began.
By various accounts, Dawson was left on the street or perhaps outside a police station. Maybe he was born in Pusan, maybe in Seoul. "We know very little," Deborah said.
The orphanage assigned him a birth date of Nov. 30, 1978.
That made him roughly 3 years old when Deborah and her husband, Mike, adopted and brought him to the United States after having seen only a black-and-white photograph.
The Dawsons were ski instructors at Vail and Toby, they soon learned, had a natural passion for athletics.
"We had a trampoline in our backyard," said Deborah, who attended Wednesday's competition in a shining, gold parka. "I could see him from the kitchen. When he went beyond the window, it scared me but that's the kind of kid he was."
His parents never stopped him from skiing fast or taking steep runs. By 6, he was racing Alpine. By 12, he had switched to freestyle, on his way up the ladder of the U.S. program.
Skiing at the World Cup level, he occasionally fell victim to his own bravado, suffering a broken foot and leg in separate instances, and sustaining a lacerated kidney while goofing around on the mountain.
There was also the matter of maturing. After failing to make the U.S. team for the 2002 Salt Lake City Games -- "I basically, completely choked" -- he rededicated himself to becoming more technically sound.
