ATHLETE'S DAD PAINTED LONG ROAD TO VICTORY.

Byline: Jon Lewis Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

As an artist, Jim O'Brien of Redding is used to dealing with an array of colors.

As the father of U.S. athlete Dan O'Brien - who won the gold medal in the decathlon Thursday at the Olympic Games in Atlanta - he was focused solely on one color: gold.

O'Brien, who moved to Redding from Westwood four months ago to open a commercial fire and security alarm business in Anderson, has been painting for about 10 years.

He began fooling around with oils as a way to occupy his time during the winter months when rain and snow kept him from his work as a contract log scaler with the Weyerhauser Co. ``It was more as a hobby than anything else,'' O'Brien said.

``I had been doing it for many years and people said I had a talent for it so I decided to pursue it about six years ago,'' said O'Brien, adding that he's taken some lessons but is mostly self-taught.

After beginning with wildlife and landscape pictures, O'Brien said his wife, Virginia, suggested he begin painting pictures of his son. ``When the `Dan & Dave' Reebok campaign began, I started painting him in earnest,'' O'Brien said.

That campaign, of course, went bust, as did Dan O'Brien's chances to qualify for the 1992 Olympics when the decathlete missed all three attempts at the pole vault.

``That was quite a setback to Dan. He felt like he let down his coaches, parents, sponsors, his country . . . but like most good decathletes, he bounced back,'' O'Brien said.

And bounce back he did, setting the world record for points earned in the 10-event contest in September 1992 in France. Dan O'Brien, 30, is a three-time world champion in the decathlon and entered the '96 Games as the favorite for the gold medal.

O'Brien and his wife, who divorced six years ago, adopted six children, including Dan when he was 2 years old, while living in Klamath Falls, Ore. O'Brien's wife, who is a hairdresser in Red Bluff, had two children from a previous marriage. O'Brien said all the family members remain close and usually hold reunions whenever Dan O'Brien competes. A total of 18 family members traveled to Atlanta to cheer him on in the two-day decathlon.

Currently, O'Brien has a series of limited-edition prints of Dan O'Brien in different competitive situations that are being offered at Scoreboard, a sports memorabilia store in the Mt. Shasta Mall.

Now that his son has captured the coveted gold, O'Brien says he will explore marketing avenues through the Internet. Beyond that, he said he's not sure where his art will take him. ``I'm an artist,'' he conceded, ``not a marketer.''

The road to Atlanta and the chance to prove he was the ``world's greatest athlete'' had its share of bumps for Dan O'Brien, his father said. Reared in Klamath Falls, where he earned all-state honors in football, basketball and track at Henley High School, Dan O'Brien went to the University of Idaho on a full-ride athletic scholarship only to be kicked out of school for failing grades.

O'Brien said his son reached a low ebb in December 1987 when, after a bout with drugs and alcohol, he found himself out of school and several thousand dollars in debt to the university.

After deciding to realign his priorities, Dan O'Brien enrolled at Spokane Community College, improved his grades and returned to the University of Idaho. His college coach, Mike Keller, continued to instruct him in the running events (100- and 400-meter dashes, 110-meter hurdles and the 1,500-meter run) while Rick Sloan, a 1968 Olympic decathlete and a Washington State University coach, concentrated on the throwing contests (discus, javelin and shot-put. The other decathlon events are the long jump, high jump and pole vault.)

While attempting to qualify for the 1988 Olympic Games, Dan O'Brien suffered a hamstring injury in the long jump and didn't really recover until the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle when he finished second to Dave Johnson. The Dave of ``Dan and Dave'' finished sixth at the Olympic trials in June and failed to make the U.S. team.