OLYMPIC YEARS ARE INTENSE on the ski team. Young kids run all out to make the squad. Veterans race for one more shot at glory. Pressure mounts. Bill Marolt has set a public goal of winning more medals in ski and snowboard events than any other nation. Jesse Hunt says he expects the men's and women's alpine teams to bring home a total of eight—four times as many as they nabbed in Salt Lake City.

The U.S. can race four athletes in each of the five Olympic events. In theory, every slot is up for grabs; the top four ranked skiers in each discipline will go to Turin. In reality, Bode Miller will race in all five—and could medal in each. Daron Rahlves will race in three, and is expected to medal in at least the downhill. Unless Miller or Rahlves falters, the rest of the team will fight for two open spots in each discipline (three in slalom and combined, where Rahlves doesn't compete).

"Everyone knows what's at stake," says Mike Morin. "We've got one of the most competitive teams we've ever fielded in an Olympic year."

On the last training day in Sölden, the team lined up for a time trial. Seven slots were available for U.S. skiers in the upcoming GS race at the World Cup opener. Five were spoken for. Chip Knight, Ted Ligety, and tech skier Tom Rothrock, 27, would fight for the last two.

It was a rare intramural battle. Most national ski teams are "team" in name only—it's every man for himself. The American men are anomalies: They cheer for one another. When Miller completes a run in a race, he'll radio Rahlves or Schlopy with beta on course conditions.

Ligety bolted out of the gate and laid down a killer run. Rothrock followed. He was a bit slower but still close. Knight stepped up to the starting gate and huffed twice. "Come on, Chipper!" shouted Miller. Knight banged through the start. "He fuckin' smoked those wands!" said Miller.

He smoked the wands but not the course. A little more than one minute later, Morin announced Knight's time over the radio. It wasn't enough. Ligety and Rothrock would be racing at Sölden, where Ligety would stun the field by nabbing eighth.

An hour later, the ski team quit the course and tossed their gear on the softening snow near the parking lot. The sun bounced off the sugar-dusted Alps, and the resort's beer garden provided a soundtrack of laughter and clinking glass. Miller spoke with an Austrian TV crew while signing a kid's helmet. Schlopy chatted in German with a friend from Liechtenstein.

At a picnic table, Ligety flirted with a couple of racers on the U.S. women's team, telling one of them something about the heisse scheiss. Less than two weeks later, during Ligety's second run of the Sölden GS, he would lay down the fastest time of any racer in the heat. Though the combined times would place Hermann Maier first and Miller second, in one dazzling run Ligety would beat them all.

But right then the pressure of the World Cup, the Olympics, and Bill Marolt's goals appeared to be far in the future. Right then, it was just good to be an American in Europe, basking in the warm glow of last year's accomplishments, feeling the sun on your face, and knowing that, for at least that moment, the heisse scheiss in the skiing world was you.