Julia Marie Mancuso (born March 9, 1984) is an American retired World Cup alpine ski racer, Olympic gold medalist and podcast host.

At the start of the off-season, Mancuso endured arthroscopic surgery on her right hip to remove an inch-long bone spur on the ball of the joint.

[citation needed] Although she started off slowly, with a number of disappointing results in the first few weeks as she worked back into race shape, the 2007 season would turn out to be Mancuso's breakout year on the World Cup circuit.

After finishing on the podium in three consecutive races (2nd, 1st, 3rd) in Tarvisio, Italy, on March 2–4, 2007, she was tied for the overall World Cup lead.

Following the 2008 season, Mancuso did not achieve a top-three finish in World Cup events for nearly two years due to back problems, so her silver medal in the women's downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was another surprise.

[4] The very next day, she won another silver in the women's super combined, an event that incorporates both a downhill and a slalom run.

Since this was a few days after a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, she launched a fundraiser by pledging half her race earnings of the World Cup finals to the skiershelpingjapan.com campaign website.

But she finished in the top 15 in only one of the several late-2013 events that launched the 2014 season, and decided to take a break from the World Cup circuit to refresh for the 2014 Olympics.

[1] The following month, she announced her retirement from competition, making her final appearance in a downhill at Cortina d'Ampezzo - the venue where she had taken her first World Cup podium - whilst wearing a Wonder Woman outfit and a cape.

Her father, Ciro Mancuso, was arrested at the family home when Julia was five years old, and was later convicted of running a $140 million marijuana smuggling operation.

[20] Ciro's sentence was greatly reduced because of his cooperation with the government in cases against other alleged organization members and Mancuso's lawyer Patrick Hallinan.

Mancuso graduated from The Winter Sports School in Park City, Utah, in 2000 and resides in Olympic Valley, California.

She dated Norwegian alpine skier Aksel Lund Svindal for four years, until they decided to go their separate ways in September 2013.

[citation needed] Being the influential figure she is in Lake Tahoe, Mancuso has fostered relationships with many young racers and even sells and gives them her old racing suits.