CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Were it not for the fact that he had a thing with his ankle, and he was super busy that other time, Lance Cpl. Steve Dietrich totally could have made the US Olympic team in six different sports, sources confirmed today.

“Luge, skeleton, and bobsled are basically sledding, dude, and I was a friggin’ champ at that when I was a kid,” Dietrich told his friends in the barracks during the opening ceremonies. “I could sled like a mofo and fly down this massive hill behind our school.”

When Duffel Blog spoke to Dietrich’s brother Rob to get the hometown story of this near-competitor, he could not confirm the massiveness of the hill but did concede that his brother in fact sledded a lot.

According to his roommate, Lance Cpl. Juan Ramiro, Dietrich said he once attended a ski camp, and the coach told him he had some real potential, a fact Dietrich would not shut up about during the qualifying rounds of the alpine skiing events.

“Yeah, it was this month-long camp in the Rockies for serious athletes on the junior regional circuit who had the potential to go all the way. I came in like third overall out of all the ‘club members.’ They wouldn’t let us use the word ‘competitors’ so we’d like be friends and shit, but I knew what it was all about,” Dietrich revealed, while everyone else was trying to get a glimpse of Lyndsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin.

Dietrich’s former coach, Sue Rogers, spoke fondly of Dietrich during a phone interview.

“Sure, I remember Steve. He was the loudest kid in the after-school ski club I ran at the middle school. He always wanted to race the other kids, though I kept reminding him it was just a developmental club meant to teach the basics,” Rogers said.

Back in the maintenance bay, Dietrich summed up his near-Olympic glory, telling everyone, “Yeah, if I hadn’t been so busy in high school and then didn’t have that thing with my ankle, I totally could have qualified for all the lame ‘sledding' events, along with alpine and freestyle skiing and probably ski jumping, cause like all you gotta do is slide down the ramp and do some wicked flips in the air.”