Urska Hrovat - (Feb. 18, 1974)...’96 Worlds SL bronze medalist; 5 World Cup wins...outstanding gate-runner who tore ACL in her right knee midway through the ’97 season...all five victories have come in slaloms...her ’96 bronze was just one-hundredth of a second behind silver medalist Patricia Chauvet of France...her father, an electric worker who used to race motorcycles when he was younger, started her skiing at 2...

Spela Pretnar - (March 5, 1973)...’00 World Cup SL champ; 6 World Cup wins...a year ago - after two Olympics, a four-year World Cup victory drought and breaking her leg five times, Pretnar was tired, considering retirement and enrolling at UCLA...she’d been sick during the ’99 season and had a dismal World Championships in Vail, so she pulled it over...but during the summer, she decided to come back - and in the first slalom of last season, she and Frenchwomen Christel Saioni tied for the triumph...a rejuvenated Pretnar took it from there, won three more slaloms and added two more top-3s as she skied off with the World Cup crown...until last season, most observers probably would have listed her as stronger in GS...

Mojca Suhadolc [MOYTZ-ah SOO-ha-doltz] - (Jan. 7, 1975)...1 World Cup win...Finally! Competing on the World Cup circuit since the ’93 season, she nailed her first victory at the start of last winter...she won the super G at Lake Louise and finished the season third in the SG standings...as with all Slovenians, she was a gate-runner growing up, but when she made the national team, Suhadolc said she wanted to run downhill...concedes she sometimes is antsy about a downhill, probably a throwback to when she tore her right ACL during Summer ’93, forcing her to miss the ’94 season...