That guts me.
And Bellini?He's up there, waiting at the start like he's next in line for something that was mine.
The hill.
The podium.
Maybe even her.
Fifteen long, quiet minutes drag by before the restart clearance comes through.
Then the noise kicks back in—crowd rising like a fuse caught flame—
Bellini clicks in.Calm.Ready.
His hill.
His fans.
His goddamn fairytale setup.
He flies.I know it from the first gate.His run is aggressive, too aggressive to be called beautiful.Elegance was never in his vocabulary.Bellini charges like a bull.But for all the madness in his posture, the line is clean.
The first split flashes: red.
+0.05.
I exhale.
Then comes green at the second.The crowd erupts.I don't blame them.I've seen what a split like that does to a crowd in Austria.
But the next interval cools them down.He drops back again.And continues to lose.
When he crosses the finish, the clock flashes:
+0.03.
Three hundredths.
He throws his arms up like it's a victory.And the crowd eats it up.
I sit in the red chair, jaw tight.
Three hundredths.
That's it.
I nearly killed myself for this run.It should've been more.
I close my eyes and let the noise crash over me like static.
I won.
But only just.
And somewhere in me—past the ego, past the fire still burning in my quads—I know exactly what I risked.
And for whom I risked it.
