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Dave Steen had barely hoisted a hose in a new career as a firefighter when his past life hit him like a wall of flames.

"Hey, aren't you the guy who lost at the Olympics?" a colleague remarked on his first day on the job at an Ottawa fire hall.

From that day forward, the former decathlete - who clinched a bronze medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics - was endearingly dubbed "loser" by his co-workers.

"I was a rookie at the time," the 48-year-old said from his home in Tecumseh, Ont., recalling that first day at work.

"Then the phone goes in the hall, and over the intercom it says, 'Loser, telephone.' And I'm looking around, and these guys are going, 'Well that's you, you know.' "

For Mr. Steen, fighting fires was a far cry from dashing, hurdling and shot putting his way to a medal. But he's not alone.

Eventually even the most decorated Olympic athlete is forced to tackle the frightening prospect of landing a postpodium career.

Some keep on the straight and narrow, and pursue a coaching career in their sport. Others, such as Mr. Steen, try something totally different.

While some Olympians risk failure by venturing into the unknown, years of athletic training has armed them with a few tough as nails workplace skills - if not a few self-critical anxieties.

As a criminal defence lawyer in Calgary, Willie de Wit, 47, says he uses a lot of the rough and tumble skills honed while training for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles where he won a silver medal in boxing.

"Setting someone up in a cross-examination can be somewhat similar to setting someone up for a knockout punch," he said.

But life in law is not nearly as arduous and stressful as his one-time shot in the Olympics, he said.

"The most pressure-filled trial is nothing like a fight in front of 20,000 people, even millions of people."

The Grande Prairie, Alta., native boxed professionally for four years, then started a concrete surfacing company in California, which he eventually left to return to Canada. A friend of his, who happened to be a judge, suggested he get an education and take his fighting mind into the courtroom instead.

The career choice fit, Mr. de Wit says, and it boosted his confidence and self-perceived reputation, bruised slightly after failing to win the gold.

"People think athletes aren't that smart to begin with, especially boxers, so getting a law degree gave me the ability to get some credibility in that regard," he said.

Both Mr. de Wit and Mr. Steen say they don't talk about the Olympics much in their daily work lives. They prefer to focus on their careers and families, and simply accept it as another chapter in their lives.

Mr. Steen said that while he was satisfied bowing out with a bronze, he doesn't put his medal on display. In fact, he doesn't even know where it is.

"I think it's unhealthy to look back [and fixate on it]," he said. "My medal ... I think it's in a drawer somewhere. We don't have pictures [from the Olympics] up on the walls, either."

For Mr. de Wit, it was a trying time he would rather put away for a while.

"The Olympics for me was very pressure-filled and [I have] probably not all that many great memories from it, quite frankly," he said. "I was fully expected to win the gold and coming up with a silver was a bit of a disappointment."

Even those who have achieved maximum success in their sport can find that settling into a postcompetition career spurs a lot of anxiety.

Olympic synchronized swimmer Carolyn Waldo was at the top of her game when she retired at 23, leaving the sport in 1988 after winning two gold medals at the Seoul Olympics.

"It was like euphoria after I won, but it didn't take long to say, 'What now?' How do you beat this in life, reaching a gold medal on a podium on the Olympic Games?" she said. "It was kind of a reality check, realizing this is only a small part of my life."

Ms. Waldo dove into a career as a sportscaster with CTV Ottawa and now admits she had little training before appearing in front of the camera. "I thought I was going to retch the first two years when that red light came on in the studio," the 43-year-old said. "I wasn't experienced, I didn't have the training. In the pool, I could do it with my eyes shut."

But she kept with it, and remains in the same job 18 years later.

"I didn't give up in the pool and I didn't give up at my job. It takes patience, perseverance and hard work. You have to make it fun as well."

Even those who remain in the sport after retiring from the Olympics need a career plan, says Nicolas Gill, Canada's top judoka who won a silver medal at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Now as Team Canada's judo coach in Beijing, Mr. Gill considered his post-Olympic career options while still training for the Games.

After losing his sponsor following the Sydney Olympics, which left Mr. Gill without a judo uniform for his next stab at the Games in Athens, he launched Gill Sports, a judo outfitters store.

He says his university degree in physical education with a minor in administration at the University of Montreal helped him do it virtually on his own - a move that helped him prove to himself he had talent away from the judo mat.

"One of the realizations I had was this is one of the best educations, to try to do all this on my own without any real support," he said from Beijing.

Many athletes don't get an education first, a move that can hurt career opportunities later in life, he said. Athletes have to plan for life after the Olympics.

"Someone who's retiring in two weeks and has not prepared himself to have a career or doesn't have an education - doesn't matter how much success they have, it will probably be a rough time after."

Meanwhile, Mr. Steen is glad he left decathlons behind to fight fires. In some ways he gets the same thrill that ran through him at the Olympics 20 years ago - plus he gets to help people, not just make a personal best.

"Like track and field, there's a huge adrenalin rush associated with it," he said. "Firefighters are viewed very positively by the general public in that you walk into a situation and try to make it better."