AKSEL SVINDAL pulls to the front of the start hut and edges toward the chute. His boots creak in the packed snow. He plants his poles and leans forward as the Longines clock beeps down the count. The big Norwegian takes a final deep breath, and then, with coaches barking encouragement from behind him, he heaves himself across the start wand.

It’s December 2 at the Birds of Prey downhill race in Beaver Creek, Colorado, one of the first events in a long 2011–12 World Cup season. More than 10,000 people wait at the finish, fluttering pennants and rattling cowbells in the bitter-cold air as Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” blasts out of concert speakers. Though it’s only 11 a.m., the roving beer vendors are already doing a land-office business, and a Tyrolean oompah band threads through the crowds. A live eagle, twitching on the gloved hand of its tamer, watches over the proceedings. 

The downhill is the marquee event of skiing—the fastest, longest, and most dangerous of the alpine races. Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey doesn’t disappoint; it’s a wicked course. In the years since it was added to the World Cup tour in 1997, it has become a renowned speed event, admired for its steep technical turns but also widely considered treacherous. As in all downhills, skiers at Birds of Prey reach jittery speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour. Downhill racers are basically test pilots, always exploring the outer limits of the aircraft—only, in their case, they are the aircraft.

A commentator breaks in over the music to announce that Svindal is on course, and when his determined form flashes across the JumboTron the crowds go wild. Screaming in the stands are plenty of recovering downhillers—guys with hounded looks who understand the rush of speed and long to return to a place they know, deep inside their stapled bones, they have no business being. They’re familiar with Svindal’s story and recognize how hard it is to face down a mountain that nearly ruined you. “Beaver Creek is a special place for me,” Svindal told me before the race. “The very best and the very worst things in my career have happened here.”

Nearly all sports champions have a defining moment that exposes something profound in their character and summons a previously unseen dimension of greatness. For Svindal that moment began on a training run here at Birds of Prey almost exactly four years ago, on this same downhill course. It was November 27, 2007, a cold, overcast Tuesday. Svindal was 24 years old then, the reigning king of the World Cup ski-racing circuit. Going into the race, he was right where he wanted to be: first place in the standings for best overall World Cup skier. “I was on fire,” Svindal said. “I didn’t think anything could go wrong.”

But something about the piste that day wasn’t quite right. A dearth of storms that fall had forced Beaver Creek officials to spray down layer after layer of artificial snow. The coverage was still a little thin in places, and the course was erratic, full of unforgiving bumps and dips. The third skier out of the chute, Austrian Andreas Buder, promptly crashed, bruising his heel so severely that he would be out of commission for weeks. Several other skiers remarked on the tricky conditions. After his run, Didier Cuche, a Swiss champion hot on Svindal’s trail for the overall title, expressed his reservations. “If you make an edge mistake,” he said, “you’re going to fly—but not in the right way.”

A few moments into his run that day, Svindal dropped over the Brink, a terrifying transition roughly akin to plummeting over a waterfall. Within seconds, he accelerated from 35 mph to 60. At six feet three inches and 220 pounds, Svindal is one of the biggest skiers on the World Cup circuit, and his considerable mass helped him gather even more speed in the midsection of the course.  

By the time he flew over the Screech Owl jump, Svindal realized he was having one of the runs of his life. “I was hitting everything perfectly,” he said. He had never gone faster, never skied a tighter line or felt so in tune with the flow of the mountain. It was almost surreally quiet, only the wind gushing in his ears and the occasional fan hooting somewhere beyond the safety fences.