Cool in a Storm

It was a gold-medal run you didn’t have to see to believe because you couldn’t really see it.

Julia Mancuso, a shadowy stick figure representing the United States, descended from the start gate into a snowstorm and ultimately emerged at the foggy bottom as the winner of the women’s Olympic giant slalom here Friday.

Mancuso’s winning time of 2 minutes 9.19 seconds, flashed on the leaderboard between snow squalls, was clear enough to earn the American a .67 of a second victory over Tanja Poutiainen of Finland. Anna Ottosson of Sweden claimed the bronze with a time of 2:10.33.

Mancuso could not have skied to victory at a better time for the beleaguered U.S. women’s team, which was one visibility-poor second run from leaving Turin without any trinkets.

They race dogs in blizzards but it didn’t seem fair to race humans.

Mancuso’s performance, in fact, may be registered as an expedition in Olympic annals, with footage forwarded to the National Geographic Society.

While other racers skied aimlessly off into the woods -- 11 second-run skiers failed to complete their runs -- Mancuso put her brain on autopilot and recalled yesteryears, when she tore out the door of her Lake Tahoe home and took on all kinds of snow.

“It felt just like skiing powder at Squaw Valley,” she said.

That may sound like fun but Olympic skiers prefer packed, water-injected surfaces, scraped to the bone by course slippers.

The advantage Mancuso held over the rest of the field was that she didn’t panic when she woke up Friday to deteriorating conditions.

“I’m used to going as fast as I can down the hill, whether it’s in blizzards or powder days or when I can’t see anything,” Mancuso said. “I know where my feet are, and I know how to react when conditions get tough.”

Mancuso’s gold is precious medal in the American stockpile. She became only the second U.S. woman since 1994 to win an Alpine medal and the first American woman to win the giant slalom since Debbie Armstrong at the 1984 Sarajevo Games.

Mancuso joins Ted Ligety as the only Americans to win Alpine medals in the Turin Games. Like Ligety, Mancuso’s gold-medal breakthrough was her first major victory.

These Olympics were not treating Mancuso kindly before Friday. She and Lindsey Kildow were the budding U.S. stars, yet were 0-for-Turin before the final women’s event. Kildow at least had an excuse, her medal-earning capacity robbed by a training-run accident two days before the downhill.

Mancuso just seemed to be stuck in third gear. She finished seventh in the downhill, ninth in the combined event and 11th in super-giant slalom -- she did not race in Wednesday’s slalom.

A double bronze-medal winner at last year’s world championships, Mancuso was the U.S.’ hottest skier before the Olympics, posting three top-three finishes on the World Cup circuit just before she arrived in Sestriere.

Yet, the most talked-about story involving Mancuso until Friday was her chugging into town in her own recreational vehicle.

Mancuso parked the motor home next to RVs occupied by U.S. men’s stars Daron Rahlves and Bode Miller.

Rahlves had the biggest rig, and Mancuso’s was the smallest, prompting some to refer to the vehicles as “Papa Bear,” “Mama Bear” and “Baby Bear.”

Mancuso, though, was not allowed to tap into power at the adjacent hotel, so her father had to buy her a generator.

Just as it seemed Mancuso’s Olympic experiences would not be memorable, though, the skies opened and dumped snow by the ton.

April, her older sister and a former ski racer, recognized the conditions immediately.

“Tahoe day,” April said. “Full on. Snow, fog -- just like home.”

Friday morning, April made Julia a “yummy” breakfast of yogurt, cereal and fruit.

“She was nervous, but she doesn’t get overwhelmed,” April said of her sister. “I think that happens to a lot of people who come to the Olympics. They think this is their one chance of making it in skiing.”

Mancuso posted the fastest run in the morning slalom, meaning she would ski last in the afternoon.

Her competition was supposed to come from Sweden’s Anja Paerson, a five-time Olympic medalist and winner of Wednesday’s slalom, who stood only .18 of a second behind Mancuso’s time.

Paerson, though, apparently couldn’t get her global positioning system to work and ended up sixth.

Mancuso had never stood at the start of a second run with a chance to win, so few knew what to expect.

But Andrea Mancuso, Julia’s mother, said her daughter’s resolve had long since been forged.

When Julia was 5, her father, Ciro, was arrested for his involvement in a marijuana-smuggling ring and spent more than five years in prison.

“There are circumstances in her childhood that certainly made her a tough human being, and caused her to focus and face adversity and not let it faze her,” Andrea Mancuso said. “Like today. Look at the conditions today. It obviously didn’t faze her at all.”

After his release from prison in 2000, Ciro Mancuso again became involved in Julia’s race career.

He was in the finish area Friday, cheering his daughter to victory as he and other relatives waved their “Super Jules” flags.

He said the snow and course conditions in other events had worked against Julia, but the harder it snowed Friday, the more he thought it was going to be her day.

“It was perfect for Julia,” he said. “She likes to come out of the clouds.”

Julia Mancuso proclaimed her win a victory of spirit, for America and Italy.

Julia doesn’t speak Italian, but her maternal and paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants.

Julie said her great-great grandmother was left at a church in Bologna as a baby “because she wasn’t wanted.”

That wasn’t the case for this Mancuso.

The Italians embraced her almost as one of their own, with course workers calling out, “Go Julia!” on the slopes.

When Mancuso saw her winning time in the finish area, she said she screamed, “I can’t believe I just won the Olympics!” only to later acknowledge, “It’s weird to say that.”

The Mancuso family party soon was whisked away by van to various news conferences and celebrations.

Everything now was running on full power -- including the RV. How was this all going to affect her?

“I’m going to have a really cool gold medal,” Mancuso said. “Maybe I’ll get a little bigger RV, and maybe [next time] I’ll have power for the whole Olympics.”

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MEDAL WINNERS

WOMEN’S GIANT SLALOM

GOLD

* Julia Mancuso, Olympic Valley, Cal.

SILVER

* Tanja Poutiainen, Finland

BRONZE

* Anna Ottosson, Sweden