Nearly two years ago I visited Bill Johnson, men's 1984 Olympic downhill ski champion, in his room on the second floor of a nursing home in Gresham.

Strokes had left his left eyelid shut. His speech was a mess. His brain was so injured that he communicated best by grunting and nodding while I pointed to letters on a laminated card.

I fed Johnson pieces of a broken chocolate bar that day, dropping them into his opened mouth. Later, I sat with him as he smoked a cigarette through a rubber tube on the patio. And as I left, I looked back at Johnson, and saw a fearless, tireless competitor forever locked in a battle with his body.

On Thursday that battled ended. Bill Johnson -- the first American male to win an Olympic gold medal in alpine skiing -- died at 3:20 p.m. He was 55.

"He suffered the worst kind of pain for the past three weeks," his mother, DB Johnson-Cooper, said Thursday night. "Then he could no longer swallow, which prevented him from being able to have nourishment."

The man who always told people he wanted to go fast, did not.

Johnson fought to the end, with his close friends and family by his side.

Before the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, I visited Johnson on a half dozen occasions. The trips up the mountain always began the same: With a knock on the door to his mobile home in Zig Zag, then the sound of his shuffling feet and cane. Then Johnson smiling and happy, smoking marijuana and telling stories through slurred words.

In 2010, Johnson talked about how much he loved his children, two sons he later reconnected with while he was in the nursing home. He showed me the Olympic gold medal he won in Sarajevo at age 22, but refused to put it around his neck. He revealed that he only tried to come back at age 40 because he believed that winning another Olympics championship would bring his estranged wife back.

"I wanted my life back," he said.

Anyone who saw Johnson in 1984 remembers him flying down the mountain. The comeback was the stuff of legend. But that ended in 2001 with Johnson slamming his head against the side of a mountain, hurling forward, end over end, in a training-run accident in Montana. His life ended up messy, like that ski wreck. Johnson said in 2010 that he still didn't remember any of it.

"Maybe the brain has a way of protecting itself," he said then.

Johnson was a fighter. Anyone who skied against him competitively understood it. He dared to go faster, and push harder than his competition. Over the years, he was held up as the example of a man who gambled against the mountain, went too far, caught an unfortunate edge, and was never the same. But those who spent time with him knew that wasn't all true.

His body may have been broken, his brain changed, but Johnson was always the same stubborn warrior inside.

He lived independently for years, sometimes against the wishes of those close to him. He was unable to ski like he could before the accident, but for years, Johnson insisted that he sleep in that mobile home planted in the shadow of Mt. Hood. His victories were smaller in the end -- playing solitaire, eating lunch weekly with his mother, talking with friends -- but they remained wins of determination and focus.

Bill Johnson remained a champion.

Former Olympic ski teammate Phil Mahre told me two years ago that Johnson's success wasn't just rooted in his form.

Mahre said, "Bill had an inner-drive and deep confidence in himself that very few possess."

Actor Anthony Edwards played Johnson in a 1985 movie titled, "Going for the Gold." Edwards told me recently that in preparation for the movie he studied Johnson closely.

"His spirit was so on his sleeve," Edwards said. "Really, he was just such a great competitor. Competition is so much about psychological warfare and that's what he loved to play."

The reports over the years of his death and downfall left Johnson shaking his head. There were rumors years ago that he was on life support, and others that his strokes had left him near death. Johnson laughed about this in 2010, joking that it was going to take much more than a ski accident to end him. On one visit, Johnson told me that he still dreamed sometimes of being on skis, going fast. My notebook from those visits with Johnson are filled with his thoughts.

Bode Miller?

"A boy who skis," Johnson said.

The European competitors he out-skied for gold in 1984?

"I got in their heads so badly," he said.

His mother, DB?

"She loves me," he said, "despite everything that happened."

Johnson worked so hard in his final years to perform basic tasks. He loved receiving a card from a fan, or a bag of candy from a visitor. He informed me on that last visit in 2014, nodding and grunting as I pointed to letters on that laminated card, that it meant so much to him that he'd grown closer to his sons.

They even shared the same tattoo in the same spot -- a set of Olympic rings tattooed near their hearts.

-- @JohnCanzanoBFT