This will be, for Ingrid Butts of Park City, a very special Olympics, one she hopes she leaves with pleasant memories and not bitter tastes.
For Butts, this will be her first Olympics. For the record it will be her second.She was, in 1988, a member of the U.S. nordic team that headed to Calgary, Canada. She was, she thought, there to compete. She did, in fact, not put a ski on the competitive track.
"I wasn't allowed to ski," she recalled with obvious displeasure. "I don't know why. That was my question. I think it was a poor decision. Politics played a part and there was nothing I could do. I skied well before the Olympics and I should have been allowed to race. It left kind of a sour taste in my mouth," she said.
That was four years and several thousand hours of training ago. She is back in a U.S. Olympic uniform this year andis now in Albertville, France, to compete - and, she hopes, do well.
"I've got something to prove this year. One of my goals after the '88 Games was to not only make the team again, but to compete," she added.
Time will tell, of course, but right now it looks like she'll be on the course for the U.S. of A. She is, at 28, one of this country's best nordic skiers.
That has not always been the case. After a very poor showing in 1990 races, a season in which there was talk of her retiring, she picked up the pace and in 1991 finished with one of her very best seasons.
She said that after 1990 she stepped back, took a good hard look inside to see if she truly wanted her moment in France, and decided she did. In 1991, she won her first national title, won three Great American Ski Chase races and improved dramatically on her 1989 World Championships results.
This year she finished 36th overall in two pursuit races, but did finish 24th in the skating event, which is considered her best discipline . . . "and that was encouraging, very encouraging," she said. "That was my best finish yet.
"If things go well, and I think I'm peaking at the right time, I hope to break into the top 20. That's my goal."
Butts grew up in a ski-oriented family. She started skiing as a youngster, but an injury at age 13 cut short her alpine career. She moved to cross country skiing and after a successful junior career, went on to compete for the University of Colorado.
She has been a member of the U.S. team for about 10 seasons, several of those years on the development team.
She will likely compete in both classical and freestye events. She is expected to do best, her coaches believe, in freestyle.