My story on ski racer Julia Mancuso is on the homepage of ESPN.com today. It’s my first byline on ESPN’s page 1, which is pretty exciting. I spoke to Julia over the phone a few weeks ago when she was staying at Chile’s Hotel Portillo (seen here, in this shot taken by Jonathan Selkowitz) and we talked about her potential future career as a pro freeskier (after the 2014 Winter Olympics, she says). Last March, Julia got third in the Verbier Xtreme, a rowdy big-mountain comp that I was witness to in 2009. I actually grew up ski racing with Julia in Tahoe - she was a couple of years younger than me and she always beat me by seconds on each run (in my defense, she beat everyone by seconds on each run - she was that good, even at age 14). I’d be psyched to see Julia move into big-mountain comps and filming when she’d done racing. She could bring a real sense or credibility to an otherwise niche sport.