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SAN SICARIO -- Downhillers are just different. They always have been.
Call them courageous or inspiring or crazy, but speed racers who crash tend to return to the scene of the calamity, sooner rather than later, whether or not they are totally ready physically and emotionally to once again fly down the mountain.
U.S. rising star Lindsey Kildow and French veteran Carole Montillet-Carles, the 2002 Olympic women's downhill gold medalist, are the latest examples.
Kildow, 21, and Montillet-Carles, 32, took spectacular spills in a training run Monday. Both were hauled down the mountain. Both were helicoptered to a hospital.
Two days later, on the day of the Olympic women's downhill, Kildow had excruciating pain in her lower back. Montillet-Carles' back and ribs ached, and her face looked like something out of a horror movie -- swollen and discolored, cut and scraped.
They raced anyway, proving their mettle despite not winning a medal.
"Not racing was not an option," said Kildow, who finished eighth. "It was important to know I could do it. I just had to try."
Montillet-Carles, racing with her left eye taped open because it had swollen shut, finished 28th.
"I couldn't stay in my room and watch the race," she said. "I have no regrets, though I am in pain everywhere."
Kildow, the only woman with more than one World Cup downhill victory this season, seemed to ski cautiously.
"I was a little scared," she said. "I was a little nervous going through the bumpy section where I crashed."
Her mom, Linda Krohn, and her boyfriend, former U.S. ski team racer Thomas Vonn, were nervous, too, in their front-row seats. When Kildow got to the finish, they relaxed considerably.
"I don't understand how you could keep racing after you crash that badly," her mother said.
Kildow said she is taking anti-inflammatories and painkillers.
"But my back is extremely painful," she said. "And I don't have very much racing motion."
Her next race is Friday in the combined -- a downhill run and two slalom runs. Vonn thinks Kildow will be more aggressive in that race and also in the super-G on Sunday.
"It was great for her to get the demons out of the way," Vonn said.
One thing we know: She'll show up.
"Don't give up on me yet," she said after Wednesday's race.
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