First on skis before age 2, pulled along on a tether by Mom, Mancuso was beating boys regularly by the time she was 7. When it was too cold for others in Squaw Valley, Calif., little Jules would stay out there.

Then there’s this: When Mancuso was 5, her father was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to operating what authorities said was a $120 million marijuana smuggling operation. Her parents are divorced.

“There were definitely some difficult times,” Mancuso said shortly before the Olympics, “but looking back now, it’s nothing that’s traumatized me.”

She draws strength from her family, and they were there in force Friday. Her mother. Her father. Her grandparents of Italian heritage. Her older sister April, who raced on the University of Utah ski team. April has been driving Julia’s RV in Europe and whipped her up a breakfast of cereal, yogurt and fruit before Friday’s race.

She almost didn’t make it. In her hurry to get to the hill, Mancuso forgot her official credential and had to talk her way over to the starting gate.

“I was just excited to finally race the GS,” she said, “and show the world what I could do.”

There have been flashes of her talent before.

She’s finished second or third in World Cup events, and won two bronze medals at the 2005 Alpine World Championships, the first American woman to claim two medals at a worlds since Picabo Street in 1996.

It was Street who won the super-G at the Nagano Games for the last U.S. women’s Olympic gold in Alpine skiing. For the last American woman to win the Olympic giant slalom, you’d have to go all the way back to Debbie Armstrong in 1984.

That was the year Mancuso was born, as was men’s combined champion Ted Ligety, who will race the slalom Saturday.

So instead of all the U.S. skiers expected to do well at these Olympics — Bode Miller, Daron Rahlves, Lindsey Kildow — the team’s two medals came from a pair of 21-year-olds who once took a physics class together at a Park City, Utah, skiing academy.

“She’s been getting ready to do this since she was 3 years old,” said Mancuso’s mother, Andrea. “Just watch her. You can see she loves to ski.”

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