Mikaela Shiffrin competing in the giant slalom in Colorado on
Sunday. European Pressphoto Agency   If a bum knee keeps Lindsey
Vonn sidelined, the face of Team USA almost certainly will be
Shiffrin, a rosy-cheeked 18-year-old from Colorado. Her star
rose in February, when she won the slalom title at the world
championships in Schladming, Austria. At 17, she became skiing's
youngest female world champion since 1985.  Behind her meteoric
rise is a strategy that might surprise those parents who schlep
their children from mountain to mountain every weekend in search
of glory on the junior ski-racing circuit: As a kid, Shiffrin
didn't race much.  While other junior skiers were playing
videogames in the back of the family Subaru, Shiffrin was
playing outside, zigzagging five hours a day on her home
mountain, mastering the near-perfect balance with which she
blasts through five dozen sets of slalom gates down icy hills.
Olympic alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin Reuters   "I think it's
misguided, particularly for young