Suddenly, after days of swamping snow, the morning of Japan's Fourth of July--its national holiday, commemorating the nation's founding 2,658 years ago--dawned birthday blue. Tae Satoya, a 21-year-old from Sapporo who had never won a major competition and had finished only 11th in the first of her two runs, bumped and jangled over the women's moguls course. Then she just stood there and, with an air of excited surprise, watched champion after champion fail to beat her score. Just seven months before, soon after the world championship, her father had died, and now, as her American rival Liz McIntyre said, "she...
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