During the 1980 Winter Olympics, eight-year-old Travis Thompson snuck out of his room in the wake of the night. He packed a towel under his mother’s bedroom door – so as to not allow a glimpse of light to travel into her room. He stealthily walked toward the living room, turned on the television and for the first time, Thompson witnessed the bone-crushing sport of bobsledding. Little did he know that after 32 years – including time served in the U.S. Navy and a successful career as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon in Jupiter, the perilous sport would once again cross his path.

It was days before his 40th birthday, when the 6-foot-5 dental surgeon received a fateful phone call. Olympic gold medalist, Jim Shea was on the other end asking him to join his bobsledding team; Thompson was stunned. “I thought it was one my buddies playing a prank on me,” he says.

Sharing mutual friends, Shea had heard of Thompson’s athletic abilities. Shea was looking for a man with Thompson’s build to be a pusher for his two-man bobsled, and being that Thompson was as a triathlete and former defensive end for the U.S. Navy football team, Shea believed he had found his man. Accustomed to challenges and vigorous activity, Thompson accepted.

The two officially met on his birthday and ten days later he was on the top of a mountain in Lake Placid, N.Y. staring down into the precipice that was their track, preparing for his first run.

Although familiar with the sport, he had no idea what awaited him. “This may sound naïve, but I thought it was like a sleigh ride on those Christmas commercials with the Clydesdale horses…I would just have to sit there, while he [Shea] drove,” Thompson says.

Thompson was sorely mistaken. After his first run, where he reached speeds up to 85 miles an hour riding in a gravity-powered, fiberglass sled, a surge of reality set in. “It was an amazing, terrifying experience” Thompson says.

It has been more than nine months since that run and today he and Shea are rigorously training in order to qualify for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

With a compilation of stretching, plyometrics, hip control and sprint training, Thompson works out seven days a week.  “The next oldest athlete to compete is 27 years old, so I have to work that much harder to keep up,” he says.

When he was younger, Thompson had intended on being a Navy SEAL, but chose to be a surgeon instead. “One of my biggest regrets in life is not trying. I missed an opportunity back then, so when this opportunity fell on my lap, I didn’t take it lightly,” he says.

But as a devoted father to his six-year-old son Nikolas and as one of the partners of South Florida Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, time is scarce – a fact that doesn’t seem to stop him. Thompson’s desire to defy odds and persevere is what fuels him. While others turn their cheek to new challenges, Thompson welcomes them with open arms. He tackles them with the fervor of a champion and perhaps with the same precocity he had in that living room 32 years ago.