Author’s Note

I would like to acknowledge the real-life skiers who earned medals in the giant slalom and the slalom at the 1995 U.S. Alpine Championships and the 1996 Alpine World Championships. I stole your great feats for the sake of fiction.

I especially want to apologize to the great Alberto Tomba of Italy, who won the giant slalom in the 1996 World Championships with a time of 1:58.63. Sorry, Alberto, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of making Alexi just a little bit faster.