Lindsey Vonn: a champion for our time

Lindsey Vonn skied even faster Saturday than she did the day before in winning -- again -- a World Cup downhill at Lake Louise, Alberta. As she did Friday, she led from wire to wire. On Friday, she crossed in 1:53.19. On Saturday, she went 1:51.35. Lower temperatures had hardened the course; that made it generally faster Saturday than it had been Friday.

Vonn had won Friday by a ridiculous 1.95 seconds. She won Saturday by "only" 1.68 seconds. France's Marie Marchand-Arvier finished second. Austria's Elisabeth Goergl finished third.

To top it off, she won the super-G on Sunday, with American Julia Mancuso taking third. The only other woman to win all three World Cup races at Lake Louise was Germany's Katja Seizinger in 1997.

Vonn now has 45 World Cup wins, far and away most ever by an American. Bode Miller, who won the Birds of Prey downhill Friday in Beaver Creek, Colo., has 33.

It's important to document what Lindsey Vonn has done this weekend in Lake Louise; truly, she has made history because you don't win ski races by 1.95 and 1.68 seconds.

At the same time, enough already with the numbers. They don't tell the real story, which is that we are in the presence of one of the great champions of American sport -- any sport, any time.

There's a simple reason 15-year-old boys like Parker McDonald want Lindsey Vonn to be their date to the Homecoming dance -- which she was last month back home in Colorado -- and it's way more than the fact that she looks killer when she's all dressed up.

She is a champion.

And we as a nation are so eager for a champion the likes of Lindsey Vonn.

No one, of course, is perfect, and Lindsey would be the first to tell you she is not.

But there hasn't been even one significant misstep on the public stage, even as she has traversed any number of personal dramas -- including the split, just announced, from her husband, Thomas.

The way she handled that this week? She made a point of publicly thanking her teammates; her extended World Cup family; posted a picture of longtime friend and rival Maria Hoefl-Riesch on Facebook; and then went out and won, big time, twice.

Even Julia Mancuso, who came of age with her on tour and is a very different spirit, said on Facebook after the first victory at Lake Louise that "you have to be impressed by a 2-second win by Lindsey Vonn."

All Lindsey does, basically, is overcome adversity and win. There might, or might not, be a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes. If there is, she doesn't let on. She doesn't complain. She just goes out, races as hard as she can, and a heck of a lot of the time she wins.

Lesser souls would have crumbled under any one of these incidents:

The horrifying training crash at the 2006 Olympics, so bad that a lot of people thought would have left her with a broken back -- she got out of the hospital and finished eighth at the downhill.

The bizarre incident at the 2009 world championships where her thumb was almost severed by a champagne bottle -- for the rest of the season, she skied with her thumb taped to her pole and won the overall World Cup title.

The crash before the 2010 Winter Games that banged her shin so severely that she couldn't even put her ski boot on -- she managed to win two medals, including gold in the downhill.

The concussion last season -- she overcame it and then, down 216 points, went on one of the great runs for the overall title, denied at the very end by the weather, short by only three points.

You want character, sportsmanship, fair play -- the kind of athlete little kids stand in line, in the cold, to get an autograph from?

One autograph request on Saturday was for Lindsey to sign a little girl's forehead.

"It's really cute," Lindsey said. "Kids just come up with some crazy ideas about what they want me to sign. You know, mostly it's hats and shirts but a lot of times it's foreheads and cheeks and arms. Kids are crazy. But very cute."

And here's why she's so obliging -- because when she, Lindsey, was a little girl, Picabo Street signed a poster, and Lindsey still has that poster. It's up in her house.

"It's something I've always remembered -- how big an impact Picabo had in my life when I was a kid," she said. "I always try to do my best to keep the kids positive and smiling and encourage them to follow their dreams, like Picabo did for me."

That's the real story.

Sarah Hendrickson's flying feat

There are those select few who willingly strap skis to their feet and throw themselves off jumps and into the air. They fly and they say it's the greatest feeling in the world. Until Saturday, there had never been a World Cup event at which those few sanctioned to do so had been female.

Now that event is history, and the books will forever say that the winner of the first World Cup ski jump -- on the same hill in Lillehammer, Norway, used by the men at the 1994 Winter Games -- was a 17-year-old American. Her name is Sarah Hendrickson. She didn't just win. She won big. She flew long and strong.

"There's nothing else you can ever imagine," she said afterward in a telephone interview. "There's nothing else in the world that can compare. There's not one time you don't have that wonderful feeling. You love the sport. And flying through the air is what you train for every day.

"When I jump, I forget about everything that's around me."

Sarah's first jump Saturday was 100.5 meters, seven-and-a-half meters longer than anyone else; her second was 95.5, again well out in front. She scored 277 points for the win. Coline Mattel of France took second with 247.7 points, Melanie Faisst of Germany third with 245.5

Nearly 50 jumpers from 15 nations competed Saturday; this first-ever women's jump World Cup tour includes 14 events at nine venues in seven countries. The women have been jumping on the lower-level Continental Cup for seven years. They are due to make their Olympic début at the 2014 Sochi Games.

It is way too soon to be forecasting Olympic prospects for Sarah, or for anyone else. Even so, her development is a classic study in exactly what American officials said would happen as a result of the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.

She was born in Salt Lake and raised in Park City, 35 minutes up Interstate 80, where many of the alpine and the jumping events of those 2002 Games were held.

Sarah has been on skis since she was 2. Her older brother, Nick, who is now 20, is on the U.S. Nordic combined team. "Jump far lil sis!" he posted Saturday to his Twitter account.

In 2002, during the Salt Lake Games, the locals' access to what is now Utah Olympic Park in Park City was naturally closed down, Sarah remembers. There were some small hills at the Canyons Resort and, she said, "I started [jumping] because I saw my brother doing it."

She said, "You start out using your alpine skis. Gradually, you switch to jumping skis. I haven't stopped since."

In 2010, Sarah became the only American -- male or female -- to win a medal in a junior world ski jumping championship, winning bronze.

This week, it was clear Sarah was the strongest in the women's field. On Friday, she was first in both training rounds and had the longest jump of the day, 98 meters.

The issue Saturday, really, was whether she could hold it together mentally.

As it turned out -- no problem.

"Today she was unbeatable," the U.S. women's coach, Paolo Bernardi, said. "At the moment she looks like a dominator. She is mentally two, three steps ahead of everybody else. She is in the zone."

She's only 17. You'd never know it.

"At the U.S. team, we have been training for quite a few years now," Sarah said. "We train for competition. Once you get to the jumping level of training, you have to train like you're competing. Ski jumping is a huge, huge, huge mental game. That's a huge part of it.

"What helps me is just relaxing and always thinking that I have more opportunities to come. If a particular jump works out -- awesome. If one doesn't work out, ok, I have another opportunity."

This first World Cup opportunity, though, forever marks Sarah as something special. "It's a nice history what is going on: Sarah is the perfect player, the perfect actor, for the viewers at home," Bernardi said.

Sarah said of winning: "It's fun." She laughed. "For sure."

Lindsey Vonn +1.95 seconds = wow

Lindsey Vonn didn't just win her 43rd World Cup race Friday. She absolutely dominated.

She won the downhill in Lake Louise, Alberta, up in Canada, by 1.95 seconds. That's crazy.

Alpine skiing is typically decided by tenths or even hundredths of a second. Bode Miller won the Birds of Prey World Cup downhill in Beaver Creek, Colo., Friday by four-hundredths of a second. That made it a banner day for the U.S. Ski Team; the last time there was a double downhill American win was on Dec. 3, 2004, again by Bode and Lindsey. His win Friday was fantastic. Hers -- simply outrageous.

It has to be said: The other racers on the tour are, like, really good, too.

Lichtenstein's Tina Weirather, skiing from the back of the back -- bib number 40 -- was the only racer to come within two seconds of Vonn. Dominique Gisin of Switzerland, who had put up Thursday's fastest training run, was 2.06 seconds back for third place.

Vonn's winning time over the 3,068-meter course: 1:53.19.

Another American, Alice McKennis, competing in her first World Cup race since breaking her leg last year, finished eighth.

At every ski race, there's a live timing system set up so that you can follow along. It lets you see not only whether a particular racer is ahead or behind of the leader at certain intervals but also just how fast each racer is going.

Lindsey Vonn started 22nd Friday. That's an ideal start spot. On purpose, alpine racing officials group the best skiers from roughly the 16th to 22nd start slots.

That means Lindsey knew going down what her chief rivals had done.

She also knew this particular course like the back of her hand. She has seen more success here than anywhere else on tour -- before Friday, winning eight races and standing on the podium 14 times.

At the same time, it was windy out there. "I could feel the wind heavily when I was skiing," Lindsey would say later, adding, "I just tried to ski as aggressively as I could."

At the first interval Friday, she was already four-tenths of a second ahead. At the second, she was 1.07 seconds up. The first speed clock got her going 124.8 kilometers per hour, or 77.5 miles per hour. That's on ice, not snow;  ice is how the World Cup surfaces are set up.

At interval three, her lead was 1.22 seconds. At interval four, 1.35.

The second speed clock got her going 127.9 kph, or 79.5 mph.

Think about that for just a moment. At that point in the course, she already had been skiing for 80 seconds. She had about 30 seconds yet to go. This is the point where other racers start to give in; their legs start to burn and they start slowing down.

Not Lindsey Vonn. The clock proved it. She was going faster on the bottom of the hill than on top.

Think again about what she was doing. Think about driving your car on ice at 79.5 miles per hour, about what the sensation of that would be like. Now think about that would be like without being inside the heated comfort of the drivers' cockpit -- the split-second decision-making, the rush of the trees by your eyes, the slash of your skis through the ice, the whip of the cold wind on your face.

At interval five, her lead was up to 1.89 seconds. At the finish, it was 2.06, over Gissin. Weirather, 18 spots later, had yet to come.

The 1.95-second margin is by far the most Vonn has ever won by. She said she had won once by 1.2 seconds -- in Lake Louise, of all places.

 "I really couldn't believe it when I got to the finish today," Vonn said later at a news conference. "My goal today was to ski as aggressively as I could and try not to make any mistakes."

She said a moment later, a little laugh in her voice, "It was awesome."

It was, and all the more so because of what's going on in her personal life -- the recently announced split from her husband, Thomas. Her sister, Karin Kildow, came to Lake Louise to be there for her. Her U.S. teammates were being so supportive, she made a point of saying; so was Maria Hoefl-Riesch, her longtime friend; so were "the entire World Cup girls."

Even so, just to be out there on the Lake Louise course Friday was probably the very best thing for Lindsey Vonn.

"When I'm on my skis and I'm on the mountain," she said, "I feel calm and I feel comfortable. I love skiing. I love going fast. I love downhill. Today, even if I didn't win, just racing and being out on the mountain is what I need."

But, she was asked at that news conference --  to win by such a huge margin?

This is the secret to Lindsey Vonn's success -- and, for those expecting magic, it's so elemental. It's hard work and ferocious drive, all of which she made abundantly plain in one of the most incredible performances you would ever want to see in a nearly two-second victory at Lake Louise, Alberta:

"I try to work hard every day. I try to do my best every day. I always want to try to improve. Even if I win a race, I still want to improve. I think it's just that I am never satisfied. That keeps me motivated and keeps me wanting to do my best every day."

IOC hit by alleged embezzlement at Olympic Museum

The International Olympic Committee has been rocked by the discovery that as much as $1.85 million has allegedly been embezzled from the accounts of the Olympic Museum, multiple sources confirmed Thursday. Swiss police and prosecutors in Lausanne, Switzerland, the IOC's base, have launched an investigation, targeting the former head of the boutique at the Olympic Museum, Hiroshi Grieder. He is believed to be in custody, a source close to the investigation said.

The IOC has fired the three people who oversaw the museum's financial controls. The money -- somewhere between 1.4 to 1.7 million Swiss francs -- was tied to a scheme that dated back to the late 1990s, multiple sources said, speaking for publication on condition of anonymity.

The IOC's director of finance and administration, Thierry Sprunger, who had been on sick leave since Nov. 1, returned to work Thursday. He tendered his resignation to IOC president Jacques Rogge a few days ago; a formal announcement will be forthcoming in the next few days, amid meetings of the IOC's finance commission and policy-making executive board.

Sprunger, a member of the IOC staff since 1994, has not been accused of misconduct.

In an unrelated development, the IOC's protocol director, Paul Foster, also left the committee.

The discovery of something potentially amiss at the Museum has posed one of the most significant tests to the IOC leadership since the Salt Lake corruption scandal of the late 1990s; it revolved around revelations that IOC members or their relatives had been given more than $1 million in cash, gifts and other inducements by bidders for Salt Lake City's winning campaign for the 2002 Winter Games.

That affair saw the resignation or expulsion of 10 IOC members, and the enactment of a 50-point reform plan that included a ban on visits by IOC members to cities bidding for the Games.

This shows just how different the IOC is now than it was then.

Now institutional mechanisms are in place for the IOC to deal with a potential crisis, and in an intelligent manner.

"This is not Salt Lake City," a senior IOC source said, adding, "There is full transparency. We could have tried to hide the facts. We decided to address it. Let's get to the bottom of it. Let's clean it up. Let's take the consequences. All that has been done."

When he assumed the IOC presidency in 2001, Jacques Rogge -- like everyone in Olympic circles -- was keenly aware of the Salt Lake affair, and the stain of corruption. He has spent his two terms in office trying to put all that behind the IOC.

The IOC calls its CEO job "director general." Christophe de Kepper took the post earlier this year.

This, then, marked one of his first serious challenges -- and just as an Olympic year, with the London 2012 Games, is just about to start, with the world's attention turning relentlessly again towards the IOC.

De Kepper, who had previously been Rogge's chief of staff, has long been a formidable executive. Getting this wrong could undermine him. But getting it right, of course, could make him even stronger.

The alleged embezzlement was discovered in September, when there was a change in management at the Museum boutique. The books didn't seem to match up; de Kepper launched an audit, then an investigation that pointed toward fraud.

Details remain to be made fully public. But, sources said, it appears that the long-running scheme involved either cash advances on an IOC-issued credit card that were misappropriated, or false invoices to companies that never existed.

Over the years, IOC internal controls failed to pick up any discrepancies; de Kepper moved decisively to dismiss the three officials.

A few days ago, de Kepper wrote IOC staff in an e-mail, "I regret to inform you that we have discovered financial irregularities in the management of the Olympic Museum shop."

That e-mail goes on to say, "We have undertaken a full and immediate investigation of the facts, and already taken a number of measures, including dismissals and the launching of a criminal complaint against a former IOC employee. Transitional measures will be put in place for the management of the sections impacted.

"Whilst these facts are clearly not good news for the IOC, they should remind us all of our duties in terms of responsibility, efficiency and transparency and underline our strong determination to deal effectively with any matters that could damage the organization."

The Museum developments may yet hold consequences for IOC politics, in particular the race -- just now developing -- to succeed Rogge. The IOC presidential election will be held in September, 2013, in Buenos Aires.

A short list of expected candidates would include, among others, Thomas Bach of Germany and Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico.

Earlier this year, Carrion led the negotiations that brought the IOC the $4.3 billion NBC TV rights deal that runs from 2014 through 2020; that deal secures the IOC's financial base. At the same time, he is also chairman of both the IOC finance and audit commissions, and it's inevitable questions will now be asked about what he knew, and when, if anything, about the Museum finances.

Carrion said Thursday, "When this came up, we said, 'Let's investigate.' The investigation went on. We took action right away. The director general took strong and decisive action."

At the IOC's annual assembly this past summer in Durban, South Africa, longtime member Dick Pound of Canada suggested that -- strictly as a matter of best governance practice -- the chairmanship of the audit and finance commissions ought to be split between two people. That issue probably will now be put to renewed review.

The Museum, situated on a rise overlooking Lake Geneva, opened in 1993 and is consistently ranked among Europe's top tourist attractions.

In an unrelated development, the IOC said Thursday the Museum will offer free admission until the end of January before closing for a long-planned facelift. The renovation is due to last 20 months.

Marco Sullivan ready to run downhill

If you're a downhiller, and Marco Sullivan is a world-class downhiller, you live for races like the one this Friday, the screaming Birds of Prey World Cup stop in Beaver Creek, Colo. It's the premier men's downhill race each year in the United States.

And, this year, it carries a little extra meaning for Marco -- a little something extra to show he's back.

Last year, he was rolling along when a freaky training crash in Bormio, Italy, just after Christmas left him with a nasty concussion -- and, also, a little work to be done on his right knee.

The knee -- not so bad.

The concussion -- bad.

The actual symptoms, he said, lasted about two weeks, the throbbing, the dull headaches, the sensitivity to light.

After those two weeks, he said, he thought he was ready to go.

The doctors hooked him up to machines that measured his reaction times to memory tests -- shapes, numbers and so on.

He definitely was not ready to go.

For a guy like Marco, who grew up in Squaw Valley, Calif., who was on skis at 3, who was racing by 7, this was not good.

As easy-going as he is -- this was definitely not good.

Ultimately, it would take a solid two months until Marco would be cleared to ski.

He "fore-ran" the course -- that's ski-talk for coming down the mountain first -- at the U.S. Nationals, in the late spring. Then he got back with the U.S. team and moved on to training camps in Mammoth Mountain, Calif., in May.

Even then, though, he was skiing "tentatively," adding, "I don't know if it was because of the head injury or if it was because of how long I had been off skis. I wasn't myself."

In September, as is traditional, the American team went down to Chile, in search of Southern Hemisphere snow. It was there -- nearly nine long months after the concussion -- that Marco felt himself again.

"I felt like I could charge without any reservations," he said. "I was charging and skiing well. I knew I was going to be a competitor again."

Last weekend, in Lake Louise, Alberta, up in Canada, Marco got back in the World Cup points, finishing 24th in the downhill, 17th in the super-G.

As if Marco needs yet more motivation at Birds of Prey -- it was here in 2004, during a training run, that he wiped out and tore an ACL. That injury more or less cost him two seasons.

This is his 12th year on the U.S. Ski Team. He has pretty much seen it all.

"I'm feeling  strong," he said. "The equipment's good."

He added, "As you get older, you take more pleasure in seeing your teammates do well. Of course you're still in it to win. It used to be, though that when my teammates won, I was [mad]. Now it's like I'm stoked for the younger guys to ski fast. I want to see our whole team succeed and I'm trying to be a big part of that. We do have a strong team this year. It should be exciting."

The team behind the U.S. track team's success

Three years ago, in the call room underneath the Bird's Nest, just before the women's 4x100, that American relay team learned -- to their dismay -- that Team USA staffers had failed to pick up their bib numbers for the race. The bibs would have to be written out, by hand, right then and there, as if this was a high school meet instead of the 2008 Olympic Games.

A few minutes later, out on the track, he U.S. women would go on to drop the baton. While that wasn't the reason -- of course not -- it proved a "significant distraction," one of the athletes would later explain in USA Track & Field's Project 30 report, a distraction so "embarrassing" that in the telling of it months later she was still "on the verge of tears."

Something clearly had to change.

It has, and in the wake of the U.S. team's performance this past summer at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea -- winners of 25 medals -- full credit is due.

First and foremost, to the athletes, of course. They're the ones out on the track and on the field.

And while the coaches and shoe companies and other sponsors can justifiably take credit, there's now a fully functioning team behind the team -- led by Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, USATF's chief of sport performance.

It's because of episodes such as the "bib debacle" -- the exact phrasing that's used in Project 30 -- that Fitzgerald Mosley was hired.

It's precisely that sort of stuff she has corrected.

Her purview is the kind of stuff that people tend not to think about a great deal until it matters, and then it matters a lot.

Because it has to work, and work exactly right. It's detail work, and pressure work.

She -- and her team -- are really, really good at it, and as the track and field community gathers this week in St. Louis for the annual USATF convention, they deserve full recognition.

Fitzgerald Mosley came to work for USATF in the summer of 2009. She had been president and chief executive of Women In Cable Telecommunications, the oldest and largest group serving women professionals in the industry, for the eight years before that, managing an organization of nearly 8,000 members.

She gets both the big-picture stuff and the details, too. Critically, she also knows her way around the nuanced world of Olympic sport, business and politics; she was director of the U.S. Olympic Training Centers from 1997-2000. She is the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles.

It is not too much to say that no single person behind the scenes at USATF has -- or will have -- a bigger impact in the way the track and field team performs than Fitzgerald Mosley.

You saw it in Daegu, and you'll see it same next summer in London. The team won 25 medals in Daegu and but for the truly unexpected that elusive 30 might actually have happened -- and could well in 2012:

The Americans got all four men in the final 12 in Daegu in shot put, an event the U.S. has dominated; none got a medal. The U.S., traditionally strong in the 400-meter men's hurdles, got no medals despite two finalists. The Americans got no medals in pole vaulting, men's or women's, another typical strength.

That's of course what you see. What you don't is just as important, if not more so.

For instance, when Fitzgerald Mosley took over in 2009, she naturally reviewed the books, and noticed that "upwards of $100,000," which could gone toward athlete support, hadn't.

Now there's a defined four-tier system in place that spells out who's eligible for what funds. More than 80 percent of the athletes winning medals are in that system. "I thought we needed to make this as easy as possible," she said.

At the world championships two summers ago, the ratio of medical staff -- doctors, trainers, therapists, chiropractors -- to athletes was 20:1. This summer it was 10:1. "We heard the athletes," Fitzgerald Mosley said. "They said, 'It's not enough medical.' "

She added of the 2011 medical team, "We'll have the same medical staff coming back for the Olympics. It's just that important … That's what the [athletes] told us they want. They want as much consistency as possible."

And innovation where appropriate.

For instance, Randy Wilber, the U.S. Olympic Committee's senior sports physiologist,

brought -- for the first time -- 16 special cooling vests to Korea to help beat the crazy heat. The vests then got used a total of 33 times by 88 athletes. Where did they make special sense? In, for instance, the decathlon -- where Trey Hardee and Ashton Eaton went 1-2.

To avoid a repeat of the 2008 bib episode, no one -- but no one -- gets out onto the track anymore without passing by Sharrieffa Barksdale, who is more or less the track team's "team mom."

Mind you, these are professional athletes, some of them huge stars, and you wouldn't think they would necessarily respond to an environment in which there's a team-wide talent show and, if you win a medal, there's sparkling cider and your hotel room door gets all dressed up with streamers. It's kind of like being back on a youth soccer team. But they eat it up. And you know why?

Because they're all a long way from home. And Sharrieffa Barksdale is empowered to make them feel like they're all in it together, as a team, making memories that will last a lifetime.

On the way to the team bus, she checks and double-checks your gear, to make sure you have everything -- there are known offenders, and she knows full well who's likely to forget his or jersey or socks -- and then she sends everyone out to the track with a poem. For real.

Barksdale, too, is a 1984 Olympian and, as well, Fitzgerald Mosley's former teammate at Tennessee. Barksdale, who lives now in Lexington, Ky., left the sport, then came back and brings a sense of been there-done that and an unreserved sense of joy.

She said, "I I really enjoy motivating the athletes, I think I bring a lot to the table," adding, "When they leave me, my motto is, 'Winners train. Losers complain.' Which one are you?"

In Daegu, the Americans were big winners. There's a reason why.

Fitzgerald Mosley is typically quick to deflect credit onto others. She typically says  she is simply grateful for the opportunity to be part of the team.

Benita, here's one day where you deserve some credit yourself.

"You think about 2008 and that women's relay, about showing up at the starting line and not having your number," she said. "It's because some manager forgot to pick up the package?

"We can't afford that. I remember almost crying," she said, an Olympian herself, just thinking about what that must have been like for the four women in that relay.

"We are going to get it down now to a science. We are going to dot every i and cross every t."

Mikaela Shiffrin's top-10 Aspen moment

At 17, Lindsey Kildow -- you know her now as Lindsey Vonn -- raced in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. When she was not quite 16 -- 15 years, eight months -- Julia Mancuso made her World Cup début.

Mikaela Shiffrin is 16 years old. She didn't just start Sunday in the slalom at the Aspen World Cup tour stop. She finished eighth.

Moreover, Shiffrin was the only American to make the 30-woman second run.

Mancuso, who on Saturday had finished third in the giant slalom, finished 31st in the first run. Resi Stiegler and Sarah Schleper skied out. Lindsey Vonn, nursing a sore back, didn't start; she anticipates racing in next week's speed events in Lake Louise, up in Canada.

Marlies Schild of Austria, who is the best slalom skier in the world -- winner not only of the 2011 World Cup season slalom title but also the 2011 world champion -- won the race, a year after missing the first gate.

Her winning margin: a full 1.19 seconds over Sweden's Maria Pietilae-Holmner. She had won last year's race.

German's Maria Hoefl-Riesch -- the defending overall champion -- took third, another 77-hundredths back.

The story of the day, though, was the top-10 finish of a 16-year-old American.

This is the thing about the American alpine program that now gives the Europeans fits.

It's not just that the United States produces stars -- Vonn, Mancuso and, on the men's side, Bode Miller and Ted Ligety.

It's that the Americans produce stars and depth.

It's now two-plus years until the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. And now here comes another promising 16-year-old American. She's from Vail and was skiing the family driveway at 3.

The Europeans actually got to see Mikaela for the first time last spring, at the Spindleruv Mlyn World Cup stop in the Czech Republic. So Aspen wasn't her World Cup début - Spindleruv Mlyn was. Her birthday came the day after the races there ended, so she was still just 15; she started both the giant slalom and slalom, missing the final slalom run by only five-hundredths of a second.

Three weeks later, back in the States, at the U.S. national championships in Winter Park, Colo., she won the slalom. She was named the 2011 Ski Racing Magazine Junior of the Year. Former winners of the award? The likes of Vonn and Mancuso.

On Saturday in Aspen, she started the giant slalom, finishing 35th, again just barely missing the cut. On the way to the lift for Sunday's first slalom run, she told the U.S. Ski Team's Doug Haney, "Today is going to be a lot of fun."

She finished in the top 12 in the first run, then in the second moved up to eighth.

By definition, alpine skiing rewards those who have been there. It gives the best start positions and bib numbers to those deemed likeliest to win; fair or not, that's the system. That makes it all that much tougher to break through. Look at the bib numbers of the women who finished ahead of Shiffrin on Sunday: 6, 4, 3, 1, 2, 5, 10.

Shiffrin's start position in that first run, when the snow going around the gates was bound to be all choppy and rutty: 37.

When you understand that sort of nuance, it makes Shiffrin's breakthrough on Sunday all the more impressive.

"All I can say is this is unreal," she said afterward.

"I'll for sure be excited for the next five months," meaning the duration of the World Cup season, "but it's also probably going to take five years to even realize that I'm racing World Cup."

She also said, "I've been watching all these athletes studiously to try and figure out how I can get to their level. I know that will never change."

And, "This is a great accomplishment but I still have a long ways to go. I'll try to keep things grounded and keep moving forward."

Julia Mancuso's fun day

Julia Mancuso is a big-game skier, and so much more. She surfs. She does yoga. She does tons of high-profile charity work. She is an adventure traveler. It's all part of the package.

When she's fit and when she's been training hard, she's as good as an alpine racer as anyone in the world.

Mancuso proved that again Saturday with a third place in the giant slalom at the Aspen World Cup stop, a notoriously difficult hill.

If at first third place in a World Cup stop doesn't sound like all that big a deal, consider:

-- It was the first American top-three finish in seven years, since Kristina Koznick took a third in a slalom in 2004

-- It was only the second podium finish ever for an American women in Aspen. Tamara McKinney won the Aspen GS in 1981. McKinney, who is from Squaw Valley, California, was on hand Saturday in Aspen to watch; Mancuso is from the Lake Tahoe area as well and the racing suit she wore Saturday featured a Squaw Valley trail map on it, which -- again -- tells you about Jules, as she is known to those who know her.

Germany's Viktoria Regensburg won the race, in a combined time of 2 minutes, 11.25 seconds. Austria's Elisabeth Goergl took second, 33-hundredths of a second behind.

Mancuso finished 11-hundredths behind Goergl.

American Lindsey Vonn, who won the season-opening GS in Soelden, Austria, last month, finished twelfth. The Aspen course has always given Vonn trouble; further, her back has been bothering her after tweaking it in training last week.

Mancuso is of course the 2006 Torino Games GS gold medalist and the 2010 Vancouver Games silver medalist in the downhill and super-combined, results that have cemented her reputation as a big-game skier.

She has always had incredible talent. The challenge has always been her fitness and consistency. Last season, she showed what she could do when all that talent met hard work and she stayed healthy over the course of a season:

Five World Cup podiums, including a win at the final downhill. Third in both the final downhill and super-G standings. Fifth in the overall standings.

She said Saturday, "I was really happy with my season last year. There were a couple times when I wasn't as consistent, I would say. Being in the top 10 I am always psyched. Building off last year, I guess, I can try being in the top five every race. But I'd say I really like to go out and ski and have fun. If I can have a season just like last year, I'll be happy. Better than last year, I'll be happy, also."

In Soelden last month, Mancuso finished in tenth place. She then came back home for a month of training at Vail and Copper Mountain.

So Saturday's podium wasn't really all that big a surprise. She had, as she said afterward, been training hard and fast:

"It's always good to ski fast and to have a podium. That gives me confidence. I'm just real excited. My GS has been training really well. To be able to do it in the race, to get back on the podium, I haven't been on the podium in the GS in a long time," since December 2007, in Lienz, Austria, in fact, "so it feels really good to be right in there, and I am hoping to just keep that going for the rest of the season."

At the same time, the reason she was training hard and well is because, when all is said and done, she's Julia Mancuso, and where some skiers are out there seemingly waging a personal war with the mountain, Jules -- who loves to free ski -- is out there reveling in the moment.

"I really like Aspen," she said.

"I have always had really good -- every time I have raced here I have been close to top 10, or top 10. So I have always really liked the hill. I think in general you just have to think about free skiing -- not really look at the gates, just 'cuz there is so much terrain, it's more about, you know, flowing, moving with the terrain to the finish. Because there's really -- there's the one road where it flattens out in the middle but, other than that, it's always moving and kind of steep.

"It's a lot of fun," she said, summing up, which is the exact same thing surfers say when they describe, you know, like, a really excellent day.

Ryan Lochte "ready to rock this thing"

Ryan Lochte took all of one day off after winning six medals at swimming's world championships last summer in Shanghai. One day. For a sponsor photo shoot.

And then he was back in the pool -- gearing up for 2012, and the U.S. Trials and then the London Olympics. It's Thanksgiving, of course, this Thursday. He'll be in the pool.

"I'm ready to rock this thing," he said Sunday night before being named "male athlete of the year" -- over Michael Phelps -- at the Golden Goggles, USA Swimming's annual awards event, held in Los Angeles at the J.W. Marriott hotel at LA Live.

He added, "Come London, I want to turn some heads."

Lochte's 2011 featured two victories over Phelps in Shanghai, in the 200 free and then in the 200 individual medley. In that 200 IM Lochte touched in 1:54-flat, the first world record since the plastic suits that rocked swimming in 2009 were banned, Phelps finishing a very close second, in 1:54.16.

Lochte had himself held the prior mark, 1:54.10, set at the world championships in Rome two years ago. In Shanghai, upon setting the new mark, Lochte had said, "I wanted to do something that everyone thought was impossible."

In Los Angeles Sunday night, Lochte said, "I was happy with the outcome at world championships. But there's so much more. Definitely -- next year, a lot better."

He also said, "A couple guys might have something to say about that. They can talk all they want. I would like to see them stop me. This is my year."

Phelps, who didn't attend Sunday night's event, didn't win in any of the four categories in which he was nominated. Lochte, meanwhile, showed up dressed to the nines, in white on black, all Ralph Lauren, accented with a pair of slip-on black shoes emblazoned on top with a script "RL."

Ralph Lauren? Ryan Lochte?

The man has always had style.

And, of course, confidence.

This is the thing about Lochte. Some get on the blocks with the great Phelps and, even if they don't admit it, are if not fearful of being in the same race at least a tad wary.

It's understandable. Phelps has 16 Olympic medals, 14 gold. He famously won eight golds in Beijing. He has 33 world championship medals, 26 gold.

Lochte and Phelps are genuinely friends and, at the same time, respectful and intense rivals. They push each other. They bring out, in each other, the best.

And each knows it.

Lochte, though, fears nothing and no one.

As Lochte said Sunday night, referring to Phelps, "What he has done for the sport of swimming is amazing. I don't think anyone in the entire world can duplicate what he has done … I am honored to be in the same disciplines. To race with him, to be in the same pool, to be on the same team with him, is seriously amazing.

At the same time, he said, "I know a lot of swimmers, they see me or Michael, they go, 'Oh well, I'll go for second or third or fourth.' That's not me. I'm going there to win. I'm not going there for second or third.  I'm training to win. Not to go for second or third.

And as for Phelps, Lochte said, "There's no doubt in my mind he's training really hard. He wasn't really happy with last year," meaning the 2011 worlds in Shanghai, where Phelps said repeatedly he wasn't in tip-top shape.

"I know he's training hard. That's motivating me. Because I know he's training. I want to go back in the water and train even harder than I have trained before."

Just over 200 days now until the U.S. Trials in Omaha, another few weeks beyond that to the Olympics in London, and on a rainy night in Los Angeles here was the unassailable prediction from Ryan Lochte: "It's going to be a good show."

The need for speed

The U.S. Ski Team's speed-training venue, which opens Tuesday at Copper Mountain, Colo., is a one-of-a-kind in the world and underscores the big-picture thinking that has driven the American program's relentless drive to become, truly, best in the world. Once, the Europeans snickered at the notion that the American team could be the best.

No longer -- not with the likes of Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety, Bode Miller and Julia Mancuso leading the way.

All, of course, are first-rate athletes.

"I get the kicks out of this job when I see our athletes do well," said Bill Marolt, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn since 1996. "That's what motivates me."

Marolt is a first-rate executive. He, and his vision, are a big reason why the U.S. Ski Team -- in all its iterations, alpine, freestyle, cross-country, Nordic combined, snowboard -- have been good at doing something that eludes so many others: developing success.

That's why the opening of the Copper Mountain Speed Center is such a jolt.

It's in keeping with other big Marolt ideas.

Like -- the Center of Excellence, the USSA's three-story, 85,000-square foot headquarters building, which opened in 2009 just east of Park City, Utah. It features state-of-the-art training and sports science facilities.

Like -- the agreement the alpine team announced last month that names the Austrian resorts of Soelden and Obergurgl-Hochgurgl, about an hour from Innsbruck, a U.S. Ski Team partner. The three-year deal names the resort the official European training base for the U.S. men's alpine team through 2014.

That is a big deal psychologically. The Americans are basically setting up camp, and in Austria no less -- where alpine skiing rules in the winter.

Even without all of that, it's a huge gain logistically. Instead of flying back to the States for training or R&R, the idea is -- just pop over to Soelden.

"This is my 12th year on the team," said downhill specialist Marco Sullivan. Because of the Soelden option, "This is the first year I'm going to stay in Europe the entire winter."

Marolt said, "We have really worked hard in vesting in and improving what I'm calling infrastructure. Soelden represents part of that. And Copper Mountain becomes part of what becomes the real foundation for this organization, both in the short and in the long term, for our elite athletes now and our developmental athletes down the road."

The Copper Mountain facility addresses the early-season need for speed. It's a 1.7-mile run and fully netted for safety reasons, just like a World Cup run. Starting next year, it's due to be open Nov. 1.

The U.S. team typically spends summers training in Chile and New Zealand. If snow conditions in those locales are good, then Copper Mountain "becomes frosting on the cake," Marolt said. If the summer season isn't so good, then Copper offers the U.S. team "unbelievable training and world-class snow," with 87 new automatic snowmakers.

A project like this takes time (all in, about 10 years) and money ($4.5 million, all privately raised, money that won't affect USSA's annual budget). Marolt said. "This is a facility that at the end of the day -- it's a game-changer."

Leanne Smith, in her fifth year on the U.S. team, said, "As racers, you want to get great at your craft. It's lap after lap after lap. This new hill is awesome.

"I'm looking out my window at it right now. We are extremely fortunate to have it. You know," she said, "no one else in the world has it."