Jim Litke AP columnist

SAN SICARIO, Italy - Her back was aching, her skis were chattering and the timing device tracking Lindsey Kildow as she breezed down the mountain was pushing 50 mph. Her mind was racing at least twice that fast.

Barely 48 hours after Kildow crashed, cartwheeled 15 feet up in the air and then came to a halt crumpled in a heap, she was closing in on the same stretch of the Olympic downhill course where her training run had ended in near disaster.

“I was a little nervous, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “It was very difficult.”

In less than two minutes Wednesday — 1:57.78 to be exact — the 21-year-old skier shamed all those big, bad, muscle-bound ballplayers who use the wrong brand of shampoo in a locker room shower as an excuse to go on the disabled list. Kildow didn’t make it to the medals stand — that would have been asking too much — but settled instead for eighth in a race she came to San Sicario with a solid chance to win.

Just showing up at the starting gate, though, made her golden to the ski world.

“It takes a lot to psych yourself up, because you know it’s important to get back to the course as soon as you can,” said U.S. men’s skier Steven Nyman, who was on hand to root for Julia Mancuso, his girlfriend and Kildow’s teammate. “But believe me, it’s always a little tougher coming back to the part of the hill that ate you up.

“Because,” he added, “you know if you don’t fight back, it’s going to bite you again.”

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Injuries are an occupational hazard in every big-time sport, but so much so in skiing that Kildow wasn’t the only athlete in Wednesday’s race who came back from a horrific crash in Monday’s training session to compete. She wasn’t even the only athlete taken off the slope in a helicopter for emergency medical treatment who healed fast enough to take another shot.

Four skiers in all crashed during training on the slick, water-soaked artificial snow and only Canadian Allison Forsyth, who tore knee ligaments, called it an Olympics. Elisabeth Goergl of Austria, who made it down to the bottom of the training run under her own power, crashed a second time Wednesday. Carole Montillet-Carles of France, who was taken by helicopter to a medical clinic in nearby Sestriere and showed up at the start line with a face so bruised that she looked like a boxer, bravely skied to 28th place.

Kildow’s performance, though, may have been even tougher.

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In Monday’s training run, she was going so fast that her momentum first splayed her skis and then launched her tumbling through the air. By the time she landed, looking backward, and banged to a stop, everybody on the hill feared the worst.

“All I remember is being in my tuck and flying,” Kildow recalled, “and looking back up at the gate I just went over.”