WITH THE MONEY BEGINNING TO FLOW in a positive direction, Marolt needed a coaching staff that could translate bold new ideas into results. One of his goals was to nurture a generation of world-class American coaches. From the late eighties to the late nineties, American ski coaches tended to be either European guns for hire or Americans drafted from another sport. Austrians, Swiss, and Swedes were good people and great coaches, Marolt believed, but their presence sent a troubling message: Americans can't do this.

Marolt has never promoted nationality over competence—even today, the women's head coach is an Austrian, Patrick Riml—but coming into Turin, the men's team has four Americans in the top spots for the first time in at least a decade. Jesse Hunt, a sandy-haired former junior champion from Vermont, now oversees both the men's and women's teams as alpine director. Phil McNichol, the men's head coach, is a straight-talking, hard-knocks skier known for tapping racer potential. Mike Morin, who coaches the tech disciplines, is a quiet, wiry New Hampshire native who started coaching before he even graduated from college. John "Johno" McBride, the charismatic men's speed coach, grew up in Aspen and roomed with Hunt at the University of Vermont. Morin and McBride bring a yin-yang balance to the team.

"Mike's the superorganized, uptight one; Johno's the relaxed, laid-back one," says Dane Spencer. "And Phil's kind of in between."

All four have spent the past 20 years banging around the U.S. racing system—coaching at elite clubs and ski-racing academies and putting in thankless years on the Europa Cup circuit, ski

After the races, the American coaches would ask the Europeans why their skiers were faster than ours. The Europeans gave it to them straight: Your technique sucks.

racing's minor league. By the late nineties, all had worked their way into jobs as assistant coaches with the U.S. team. Tired of watching their racers trip the clock entire seconds behind the Europeans, they started looking for a better way to do business. Around the bar after races, they would ask European coaches why their skiers were faster than the Americans. The Europeans gave it to them straight: Your technique sucks. Your stance is all wrong. You're out of balance.

"Our guys were out of whack," Mike Morin told me one afternoon in Sölden. "American racers thought the only way to go fast was to get in a position where your ass was basically sitting on your bindings."

The coaching staff realized it was time to start over, to rebuild the American racing style from the boots up—and what better way to start than by spying on the Austrians?

No nation in the 39-year history of the World Cup has dominated like the Austrians have in the past decade. At the height of their current run, in 1999, seven of the world's top ten ski racers were Austrian, and the depth of their team is legendary.

At Sölden, I ran into Walter Delle Karth, Hermann Maier's press officer. With his long hair and leather jacket, Delle Karth is a familiar, dashing figure at World Cup events. The Austrians were racing one another that day to determine who would compete in the World Cup opener later that month.

"How many of Austria's top guys are trying to qualify?" I asked.

"Twenty-five," he said flatly.

After a disastrous 1999 World Cup season—capped by a medal shutout at the world championships, held that year at Beaver Creek—USSA officials offered a deal to the devil. "We went to the Austrians and said, ‘Why don't you come over and train with us at Beaver Creek, and in exchange we'll train with you at one of your camps?' " recalls Alan Ashley, the USSA athletic director.

Access to Beaver Creek in November was the only card the Americans held. The resort hosts an early World Cup race each year—the lone U.S. stop on the circuit. Prior to 1999, Beaver Creek allowed only the Americans to train on its course before the race. If the Austrians could train there, it would give them a leg up on the rest of the world. The Austrians agreed.

For the next few years, the Americans trained with the Austrians at Beaver Creek, at New Zealand's Treble Cone resort, and at Portillo, Chile. With may be too strong a word; it wasn't the chummiest arrangement.

"Sometimes we'd join them for a couple sessions, but we'd get the shitty end of the stick," recalls Erik Schlopy. "One time we were supposed to train with them at Pitztal," an Austrian resort. "We went up there but couldn't find them. They left a note telling us to train at this one spot. It was OK, but it had soft, powdery snow. Later we found out they'd set up on the back side of the mountain with hard injected snow. That happened all the time."

The Austrians paid little attention to the Americans, who posed no real threat. But the American coaches watched the Austrians closely.

"What opened our eyes was the intensity of their training," Jesse Hunt told me. The Austrians didn't waste a minute on the hill; their skiers took fewer runs than the Americans, but they treated every run like it was race day. The night before a training day, the Austrians would inject water into the course with a high-pressure irrigation system. Overnight, it would freeze through, allowing the racers to train on a rock-hard, World Cup–grade surface. Soon the Americans were freezing their courses, too.

Then the Yanks made a crucial psychological breakthrough. During slalom training, the two squads went head to head in time trials. When the Americans came out on top, word spread like wildfire. "I wasn't even on the team back then and I remember hearing, ‘Bode and Chip beat the Austrians today!'" recalls Bryon Friedman. "Before that, the Austrians were like an unbeatable force. You couldn't pierce their armor."

Granted, it was just practice, but the experience of defeating them anywhere showed the Americans that it was possible. Before long they began beating the Austrians for real: In 2001 Daron Rahlves took gold in the super-G at the world championships. Two years later, Rahlves became the second American in history to win the terrifying Hahnenkamm downhill, a major World Cup upset on the Austrians' home turf. The next season, Bode Miller was beginning to tear up slalom, GS, and combined, collecting six gold medals and the 2003–04 overall GS World Cup title.

Last August, the Austrians wised up. When the Americans traveled to Treble Cone, they discovered that the Austrians had booked the entire resort and had told the manager not to let the Americans on the hill. After some logistical scrambling, the U.S. team found an alternate training site, but the message was clear: Kiss off.