Here’s a look at Julia Mancuso, one of the four Lake Tahoe medal winners at the Sochi Olympics.:
Mancuso definitely has a penchant for capturing medals at the Winter Olympics and was able to do it one more time in Sochi.
The pride of Squaw Valley ski resort, Mancuso claimed another m medal, taking a bronze medal in Sochi in the super combined alpine skiing event.
It was the fourth Olympic medal for the dynamic 29-year-old Mancuso, the most of any American woman in alpine skiing.
After taking bronze in her first event in Sochi, Mancuso couldn’t reach the podium again in three other events. She was 8th in both the downhill and super-G, and failed to finish in final event, the giant slalom.
“It takes everything coming together. It has to be that magical day,” Mancuso said.
She knows all about magical days. The first one happened eight years ago when Mancuso was the giant slalom champion at the 2006 Turin Olympics.
Four years later at the Vancouver Olympics, Mancuso shared the spotlight with U.S. teammate Lindsey Vonn. Mancuso earned silver medals in both the downhill and the combined.
The bronze was the first medal for the U.S. in alpine skiing in the 2014 Winter Olympics.
“I grew up in an Olympic Valley (Squaw Valley). It’s in my blood. It was a great downhill run (that set up her bonze medal in combined),” Mancuso said of her tendency to deliver in big events like the Olympics.”
Although Mancuso entered the Sochi Games believing this would be the end of her Olympic career, after watching 36-year-old Bodie Miller capture a fifth Olympic medal, she may try for another Olympic appearance in 2018.
“Nothing surprises me with Mancuso. “She always does really well in the big races,” Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch said.
