When Peter Hudnut fires up his computer each morning, a photograph from the 2008 Beijing Olympics appears as his desktop image. And then it fires him up.

In it, Hudnut is sitting on the pool deck at Yingdong Natatorium, his feet in the water and his body slouched in a dejected posture of defeat. A few moments earlier, Hudnut and his U.S. teammates had completed an improbable run to become Olympic silver medalists. They arrived in Beijing ranked ninth in the tournament and were leaving with the first American medal in 20 years.

To their friends, family and the U.S. water polo community back home, Hudnut and his teammates were heroes. But when Hudnut, 32, looks at that photo, he sees something else entirely.

"A loser," he says. "In a sport like ours, you don't win a silver medal. You lose the gold-medal match."

Every day for the past three months, Hudnut has looked at that photo for motivation. It reminds him of a feeling he does not want to experience again; it reminds him why he returned to the sport in 2010, two years after retiring to attend business school at Stanford. When he looks at that photograph, he is filled with a willingness to do anything, "within reason, character and integrity," to win this time around.

"I didn't come back to be a tourist at the Olympics," he says. "I didn't come back for a silver medal. This is about our team's final stand together. This is our last chance."

'I wish I was an Olympian'

Hudnut was 8 years old when the U.S. Olympic team traveled to Seoul, South Korea, for the Games of the XXIV Olympiad. From the lighting of the flame to the closing ceremonies, Hudnut spent as much time in front of the television as his school schedule, and parents, would allow. Hudnut's father, Tom, talked about the Olympic motto of "faster, higher, stronger" and what it meant to be an Olympian. He also read him the Olympic creed:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

At the time, Hudnut played baseball and basketball, but he was big for his age. He was uncoordinated, and yearned to be a natural athlete and student like his older brother, Spencer. In first grade, he had been held back with learning problems, and sports seemed just as much of an uphill slog. Nothing came easy for Hudnut, so when he heard the Olympic creed, he connected with its meaning.

"The Olympics wasn't just about being the best," he said. "It was about the constant pursuit of your potential."

The Olympics became his obsession. He drew the rings on his arms in ballpoint pen and pretended they were tattoos. He imagined himself standing on a podium, gold medal around his neck and the national anthem playing in the background. He didn't know what sport he'd play; he just knew, one day, he would be an Olympian. The next year, in third grade, he was assigned to write a poem with the title, "I wish I was ... ." In his newly learned cursive handwriting, Hudnut wrote:

I wish I was an Olympian.

I would run, jump and do the softball throw.

If I won, I would proudly carry my flag.

I wish I was an Olympian.

"That's as much as I can remember," Hudnut said. "I think the softball throw was the elementary school version of the shot put."

Missing piece to the puzzle

Hudnut was born in Washington, D.C., and his family moved to San Francisco when he was 3. When he was 9, the family moved again, to Southern California, where his father had accepted a job as headmaster at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City. The water polo coach at the time was Richard Corso, a goalie on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team. When Tom met Corso, he told him about his son's obsession with the Olympics. Bring him to a practice, Corso told his new headmaster.

"At that first practice, Coach gave me a little blue bag with the Olympic rings on one side and 'USA' on the other. Inside it was a teeny Speedo, a tiny ball and a cap," Hudnut said. "It was a kid's set, but it was too small because I was a giant child."

Corso reiterated to Hudnut what his dad had told him about the Olympic spirit and invited him to practice with the junior high team. At the time, Hudnut didn't know how to swim, could barely tread water and, after his first practice, climbed out of the pool in tears.

"I was playing with eighth graders," he said. "The coach who was running practice didn't know I was in fourth grade because I was so big."

So, he waited and learned how to swim. By age 11, Hudnut was finally playing on the school team. He was still growing -- at age 12, he was already 6-foot-1 -- and getting fit. In 1992, Corso was named coach of the U.S. Olympic team and began taking Hudnut along on the two-hour drive from the Valley to Long Beach to watch national team practices. On many of those drives, Jim Toring, the 18-year-old star of the Harvard-Westlake varsity team, sat in the passenger seat doing his homework and answering Hudnut's ceaseless supply of questions.

"We were friends, but let's call a spade a spade," Hudnut said. "I idolized Jimmy. Our friendship was based on my adoration of him and on him being very generous with his time."

Hudnut watched the best water polo players in the country and envisioned himself practicing with them. At 14, he brought home VHS tapes of their matches and taught himself trick shots. He then told his parents not to worry about paying for college. They were already putting his brother and sister through college on teachers' salaries, and he didn't want them to stress about paying for a third tuition.