Going for the Gold: Julia Mancuso

The "Going for the Gold" series kicked off our One-Year-Countdown to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We will feature a different 2010 U.S. Olympic or Paralympic hopeful each week with a vodcast on the first and second Friday of every month.

Hailing from a town known as Olympic Valley, it only makes sense that Julia Mancuso went on to become a two-time Olympic athlete. The town is in California, and to outsiders, it might seem as if she’d be more suited for surfing and sun than ski slopes.

But when you consider that Olympic Valley is the home of Squaw Valley, the site of the 1960 Olympic Winter Games, it starts to make sense that this California girl was more suited for snow.

Mancuso was on skis by the time she was about 3 started competing when she was about 8. It was then that her Olympic dreams were created.

Before she could get to the Winter Games, however, she had to grow up. Mancuso had a somewhat nontraditional childhood. Her family traveled a lot, her dad was in and out of the picture because of some legal issues, and eventually, her parents divorced.

When Mancuso had any frustration, she took it all out on the slopes. She always let both of her parents be important figures in her life, and today has said that she is on the best of terms with all of her family members.

Throughout her lifetime career, Mancuso has had a variety of podium finishes in the super G, downhill, slalom and giant slalom events. She made her Olympic Winter Games debut in 2002 when she was 17, and she finished 13th in the combined event.

Four years later in Torino, Mancuso placed seventh in downhill, ninth in combined and 11th in the super G. But it was her gold-medal-winning race in the giant slalom that garnered worldwide attention for the then 21-year-old.

In June 2008, when the summer athletes were preparing themselves for their journeys to Beijing, Winter Games athlete Mancuso made headlines again. She and two fellow female skiers took a six-day hike to the 19,340-foot peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The mountain, which is located in Tanzania, is the tallest mountain in Africa.

Through the climb, the girls raised awareness and more than $30,000 for Right to Play, an international humanitarian group that involves numerous Olympic athletes and sports organizations to help children and communities in disadvantaged areas of the world.

Now Mancuso is preparing to compete in Vancouver. A troublesome injury and a change in equipment kept her from impressive finishes in her international races this past season, but she still managed to earn her 10th national title, tying Bode Miller for the most of all time.

If the 25-year-old gives herself time to adjust, she can come back for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games with a vengeance. Maybe Mancuso can attain another gold or two to match her medal from 2006.

Tags: 2010, Going for the Gold, US Ski and Snowboard, Vancouver 2010