Jeremy Bloom's life has been nothing short of multidimensional. His athletic career accolades include: college football All-American at Colorado, two-time Olympic skier, international World Cup gold medalist and NFL Draft pick.

Bloom, who grew up in Loveland, also crafted a successful post-athletics career as a tech entrepreneur — in 2010 he co-founded the marketing software firm Integrate, of which he currently serves as CEO — and as a philanthropist.

Recently, Bloom channeled his energy into appearing in and producing the HBO documentary "The Weight of Gold" which takes a detailed look into the under-discussed mental health hurdles that Olympic athletes routinely deal with, often alone and without structural or medical aid.

Narrated by Michael Phelps, whose 28 career medals won are the most all-time of any Olympian, the documentary features commentary from a variety of United States Olympic athletes and medalists, all of whom share their personal insight and experiences regarding how they dealt — and continue to deal with — mental health issues that frequently come with the territory of being top-level international athletes.

There are a number of catalysts that regularly can contribute to the mental and physical strain Olympians put themselves through for years — in many cases, a lifetime — to compete in events or competitions that last for mere minutes.

For some, years and a lifetime's worth of training and preparation pays off with a place on the medalists' podium. For others, slipping up in a moment for which you've dedicated countless time and effort can be crushing.

Sasha Cohen, a former figure skater who won a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, fell during her ladies' singles routine, likely costing her the gold. Speaking to her own experience and on behalf of fellow Olympians, she recalled it as having the potential to be the "most devastating 30 seconds of your life.”

Hurdler Lolo Jones had a similar shortcoming. During the 100-meter hurdle at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, she clipped one of the hurdles and failed to medal, finishing in seventh place.

Jones also did not medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. As was the case with Cohen, the failures proved to be haunting; Jones detailed in "The Weight of Gold" how difficult it was to mentally leave those moments in the past.

She'd find herself obsessively mulling it over years after the fact during routine daily tasks such as going to the grocery store. Plus, when you are a recognizable international athlete and have people constantly approaching you in public to say things like "I'm so sorry that happened to you!" it can be extremely challenging to let go.

Bloom had his own such Olympic experiences. While he was named to the United States Ski team before he had a driver's license and was an international World Champion before he could buy a six-pack of beer, he did not win any medals at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics.

For a lot of Olympic athletes, the years of training, thousands of hours of preparation and anticipation for competing at the highest level can feel like being launched from a slingshot.

So naturally, when it comes to an end, it can often be arduous to find other activities in life of which interest and dedication are akin to the feeling and process of preparing for/competing in the Olympics.

That especially is the case for athletes who felt like they could have performed better.

“In a lot of cases, the Olympics is the pinnacle of one’s life and a lot of people are unable to find a passion that matches that energy at the Olympics," Bloom said. "I think because of that, (mistakes) stick with somebody their entire life, and I think it does."

"Folks talked about it in the documentary — ‘this is all I know, this is all I ever want to do and I’ll never get another shot of it.’"

For Bloom, he was able to mitigate his own feelings of "post-Olympic blues" by constantly having a new endeavor or project on the horizon. After the 2006 Games, it wasn't even a full calendar week before he was gearing up to pursue a career in the NFL.

He eventually was selected in the fifth round of that year's Draft by Philadelphia.

"For whatever reason, for me, I was able to find passions in other areas — today in being a tech entrepreneur, CEO and founder of a non-profit but also back then, a week after the Turin Olympics I was at the NFL Combine," he said. "A month after that I was drafted. So I always feel very fortunate and grateful that I always had something to place those passions in."

Bloom said he furthermore feels blessed to have been able to use his Olympic experiences of coming up short in a positive manner.

"For me, I would describe it as extreme sadness of not living up to my expectations, but it’s something now that I reflect on, and I can do it unemotionally. There’s no longer the emotion attached to the memory. Yeah, I fell short, but it inspired me to do X, Y and Z and actually catapulted me forward."

What's more, Bloom benefitted from advice he recalled receiving during his days with the Buffaloes.

“I’ve always believed in a philosophy that was taught to me by my head football coach at the University of Colorado, Gary Barnett," Bloom said. "To paraphrase, he believed deeply and taught all of us to always pick up every stone in front of us to see what’s underneath it. Never allow an opportunity not to be discovered. I think I’ve intentionally in my life have had to have multiple opportunities alive in knowing that a lot of them wouldn't pan out or turn into anything."

"I think having multiple irons in the fire, as long as it doesn’t allow you to lose focus on what you’re doing at the moment, has always been important to me and very helpful for me so that I’m not putting all of my eggs into one single basket.”

Ultimately, the tragic deaths of two former Olympians greatly influenced the creation and direction of "The Weight of Gold."

In the summer of 2011, U.S. aerial skier Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, a close friend of Bloom's, took his own life.

Less than 18 months prior, he had captured a silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. When the news quickly circulated around the Olympic community and in the news reels, it hit Bloom like a ton of bricks.

He couldn't help but remembering an interaction the two had shared years prior in 2002.

"There was this night in Lake Placid (New York) before the World Cup, late at night, where he knocked on my door and he was just distraught like I’d never seen him before," Bloom recalled. "He just wanted to talk and said what a hard time he was having fighting these demons in his head. At the time, I wasn’t equipped on what to do at all. I think I just concluded that he was having a bad night and he’d be fine. I didn't really think too much of it until he took his life."

"Steve Jobs once said (during) a commencement speech at Stanford — ‘you can only connect the dots of life looking backward.’ I just find so much truth to that and really at that moment, I connected those dots. I had what I think would be a normal reaction for anybody: ‘What could I have done? Could I have done more?’"

Bloom listed Peterson's death as a turning point in his own life in which he decided to better educate himself on mental health matters.

The death of three-time Olympic bobsledder Steven Holcomb also profoundly influenced the documentary. Holcomb appears in it, where he bravely recounts his own past experiences with depression and thoughts of suicide.

Tragically, the documentary goes onto reveal that the footage of Holcomb was shot in 2017, when "The Weight of Gold" director Brett Rapkin was interviewing him for a separate project with a similar focus on mental health and awareness.

It was during the filming and production of that project that Holcomb was found dead in his bed at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid.

"During that story — (Rapkin) was doing a multi-day and shoot story on Steve Holcomb — Steve passed away," Bloom said.

Afterwards, Bloom and Rapkin began to suspect that the deaths of Peterson and Holcomb were not isolated incidents.

"Brett probably remembered our conversation about 'Speedy' and he reached out to me and said ‘Hey, is there something more here?'" Bloom remembered. "I said there absolutely is. We both agreed at that point that we had to make this film. That was three and a half years ago."

Bloom and Rapkin had little issue in generating funds from investors, and from there, "The Weight of Gold" got rolling. They also received an overwhelming willingness from former Olympians who wanted to be a part of it.

"The Olympic community is small, so most of the people I reached out to and said ‘Hey, this is a topic we want to cover. What do you think about it?’ — 100% of the people I reached out to said ‘I want to share my thoughts on it,'" Bloom said.

Bloom's history of playing football, both at the college and NFL level (he was a member of the Philadelphia Eagles in 2006 and the Pittsburgh Steelers' practice squad in 2007) coupled with his international and Olympic skiing career gave him unique insight into the regularity in which athletes struggle with mental health-related issues.

Thus, it wasn't just the death of a close friend in Peterson that fully opened his eyes to the prevalence of mental health struggles not only in sports, but in everyday life.

“It wasn’t one tidal wave," he said. "It was multiple waves that hit me throughout my life that made me realize this is a really big problem in our society ... Obviously, suicide and mental health doesn’t only impact Olympic athletes and it doesn’t only impact football players. It impacts a lot of people in society."

By documenting the behind-the-curtain struggles of Olympians — who often become human metaphors and poster children for all-around strength and toughness — "The Weight of Gold" seeks to explain that athletes or those with fame and fortune are not impervious to mental health struggles.

"I think the story we wanted to tell was one that outlined the arc or a journey from Michael Phelps to Shaun White to Sasha Cohen to Apolo Anton Ohno — these are some of the most successful Olympic athletes of all-time," Bloom said. "Depression, thoughts of suicide and brain health problems — they don’t care how many medals you have in your trophy case. They don’t care how much money you have."

"I thought telling that story would give folks hope that maybe they’re not depressed because of anything that they did or didn’t do in their own life and that maybe this is something beyond their own control.”

One of the more thought-provoking segments within "The Weight of Gold" occurs when bronze medalist figure skater Gracie Gold addresses the inadequate internal infrastructure available to Olympic athletes struggling with mental health issues.

“If I had blown out my knee, I know for a fact I would’ve had the top physical therapist, the top surgeon, orthopedic — absolutely whatever I needed fixing my knee," Gold said.

But she noted that the second she mentioned trouble on the mental health front, she was literally told to seek out a therapist on her own, thus highlighting a concerning disparity between helping Olympic athletes recover from physical ailments — for which there are robust resources in place to take advantage of — and combating issues within one's mind.

In the case of the latter, Gold had nowhere to turn in terms of United States or Olympic-sponsored support systems.

“I thought her comments were equal parts poignant and powerful," Bloom said. "They really resonated with me, as well. Then you’ve got to unpack that thought and say ‘Why is this?’ I think there’s a couple principle reasons that have led to where we are that Gracie outlined so beautifully."

Bloom outlined two key areas and reasons for this:

"The first is our understanding of these conditions. If you break an ankle, all you have to do is (get) an X-ray and it’ll confirm you have a broken ankle," he said. "If you have diabetes, there’s tests for that. Our lack of understanding of when someone crosses over that chasm of ‘OK, this is now a disease, this is not just normal sadness’ — that’s hard to diagnose and we as a society, certainly the medical community, need to spend many more thousands of hours on that question of ‘How do you better diagnose someone who’s clinically depressed?’"

"The other big key driver is that I don't think the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee — I don’t think the NGBs (National Governing Bodies) of USA Swimming, USA Skiing, USA Gymnastics — (none) of those organizations knew or were aware of how pervasive this problem was."

As Bloom alluded to, in addition to the many athletes quoted in "The Weight of Gold", the widespread cases of mental suffering within the Olympic community isn't exactly a well-kept secret.

But another complication negatively impacting athletes' willingness to even admit they're having issues is rooted in financials, which the documentary dives deep into.

“The reality of funding for athletes in this country might surprise you," Olympic snowboarder Jonathan Cheever says.

The "reality" he hints at is that only a small percentage of Olympians are comfortably funded through endorsements and sponsorships. The vast majority of the pack are self-funded and/or dependent on Olympic team-issued stipends, which a lot of the time are woefully inadequate — in some cases, under $1,000 per month.

On top of that, given the intensity and regularity of training required to prepare for a once-every-four-years Olympic event, it's not exactly feasible for athletes to hold down a part-time job.

In other words, for fear of appearing weak — something that could jeopardize one's place on an Olympic roster — often times athletes aren't exactly enthusiastic to reveal their struggles to a coach, who plays a significant role in finalizing rosters.

"You can’t go to a coach, because a coach often determines an Olympics team, so there’s an inherent conflict there in not showing weakness or chink in the armor with a coach, and sharing mental health problems," Bloom said.

Bloom will be the first to tell you that a lack of understanding and empathy with respect to people suffering from mental health-related issues is far from exclusive to the Olympics and athletics.

For real, meaningful change to take place, society as a whole must look into the mirror.

“I think as a society, we’ve suppressed mental health conditions for far too long," Bloom said. "I think we’ve traditionally viewed them as a weakness inside that person. Someone says ‘I’m depressed’ (and) the often reaction or thought is, ‘Well, get stronger’ basically. But if that same person said ‘Hey, I have cancer’ you would never react that way."

"The Weight of Gold" debuted on HBO at the end of July. While there is much work yet to be done, Bloom sees momentum building in the right areas.

"Through the weight of "Weight of Gold", Sarah Hirschland, the CEO of the (United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee) has now created an independent task force to look into this and help provide independent help for athletes that are struggling," he said. "The NGB — I serve on the board with US Skiing and Snowboarding — this has been a topic that I’ve been very passionate about (and) we’re doing a lot more for athletes of USA Skiing and Snowboarding."

All in all, Bloom remains dedicated to doing his individual part to ensure that Olympic athletes of the future are able to train, compete and live in an environment that is fully devoted to their well-being, both physically and mentally.

"Through the attention and the awareness, now we’re seeing some strong signals of moving in the right direction," he said. "Organizationally, we understand that this is pervasive and we need to address it differently. Those are the two key areas — the educational side and the medical community being able to understand and identify somebody when they’re clinically depressed."

"And then, making sure that that athlete and human being has an independent body to go to to talk to about these struggles they’re having."

If you or someone you know is struggling in any way, shape or form with clinical depression or thoughts of suicide, you can call or recommend calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. The NSPH is completely confidential and monitored 24/7.