Racer Next: Keeping the faith

Julia Mancuso, the queen of big event performances, at the Sochi Olympics. GEPA/Mario Kneisl

I‘m not much for slogans. It’s probably a trained reflex from too many years of eye-glazing slogans that were invented every few years to affirm that “NOW we mean business.” That said, as far as slogans go, USSA’s “Believe in U.S.” for Sochi 2014 was a pretty good one. Nothing was better demonstrated at this Winter Olympics than the power of belief — but, of course, not just in Americans.

To be sure, the queen of harnessing that superpower has got to be Julia Mancuso, who makes a practice of bouncing off the bottom of a rut to score medals at big events. This time she could not have planned the circumstances better, being relevant enough to get herself on magazine covers, while lurking just enough under radar to avoid the “Sports Illustrated” cover and its curse.

The theme continued in the women’s downhill, where you could not have written a better fairytale ending than Dominique Gisin and Tina Maze tied atop the podium. In fact, Lara Gut’s unscripted, unhappy reaction to seeing her teammate in the winner’s box spoke volumes. I may have misinterpreted it, but the look sure seeing to say, “You’re not supposed to be there!” At the time, Gisin was best known for her nine knee surgeries and her horrific crash in the last Olympics. Who better to share that victory than Maze, who was in the midst of setting a downhill speed record in the World Cup standings?

This is just a preview. Read the entirety of Racer Next in Issue 9 of the digital magazine here.