Dale Begg-Smith, a Canadian-born moguls skier who emigrated to Australia several years back (becoming a citizen there), purportedly to take advantage of their much more relaxed national ski program, won a gold medal at the Olympics yesterday. Congratulations to Mr. Begg-Smith on the uncontestably extraordinary performance.

What makes Mr. Begg-Smith more interesting to those of us in this profession, however, is his off-the-slopes career path.

If reports are true, he somehow managed to bag tens of millions of dollars of net worth in the internet game over the past several years -- the sort of things that get every other technology worker's spouse asking "Why can't you do that?" Much like the .com bubble, it gives the perception to some that there's a tremendous wad of easy money just floating around, waiting to be grabbed from the ether.

What really draws one's attention, however, is how vague Mr. Begg-Smith is about what, financially at least, was a very successful business venture. At 21 years old he appears to have accumulated more wealth than most will in their lifetime, and he's pursuing his dreams and darting around in Lamborghinis. I've seen him described as a whiz-kid (he apparently dropped out of school at 14 [!]), an internet mogul, an internet tycoon, an internet genius, and virtually every other "gee whiz!" descriptor that the media pulls out when someone does well (by skill, or by luck) with technology. Yet he's entirely secretive about what his business did, what its current state is, how big it is/was, and so on.

In the same situation most of us would be bragging unstoppably to all that could hear about our business prowess.

The reason for the secrecy, apparently, is the nature of the business. If reports are true, Mr. Begg-Smith and his brother made their fortune through the less savoury side of the net. The side that most of us would never consider (which is why spammers and adware/spyware perpetrators manage to make so much money: There's a lot of demand for their services, but very few who are willing to provide it), technical capacity or not.

In any case, a lot of the backlash seems to be founded in envy, which is sad. The guy financially did very well for himself, and is demonstratably a world class athlete. All in all a pretty remarkable accomplishment for 21.