We were watching some tape-delayed Winter Olympics event on Sunday evening when my son asked a poignant question: which do I like best, solo events or head-to-head competitions? The question was incriminating. I could tell he was struggling to appreciate the Olympics format.

My answer came fast, but with qualification. For me, the uniqueness of Olympic competition is in watching the individual perform. Isolated from other competitors, performing before bipartisan crowds routing for another at any given time, and ignorant of their spots on the leader board, it is pressure in its purest form. The struggle of man against himself is as old as the Games.

Compounding this appeal is the biennial novelty of Olympic competition. Year in and year out, we go through the team-oriented progression of the calendar: Super Bowl, March Madness, Stanley Cup, World Series. Interspersed are some compelling man-against-man contests like the Tour de France, Wimbledon, even NASCAR's Chase For The Cup. Golf does take us on an Olympic-style march where we follow the individual in the midst of a threesome, but does so in agonizingly slow fashion even without a single-file format.

Throughout the odd-numbered years, there are assorted World Cups and World Championships that make good viewing pleasure. However, they serve merely as an Olympics preseason. Their whole purpose is to help each nation select its team and determine some automatic bids. I usually view them with the same passion as the NFL's Hall of Fame game in early August.

So, as we sat in our living room watching individual athletes or pairs perform one after another, my struggling son's next question concerned my favorite Olympics event. That, too, was easy.

On a cold day, I will down my hot chocolate in gulps. When we go to the park, I bring a sheet of wax paper to make the slides slick. Over certain stretches of highway that cannot hide state troopers, I push the family minivan to 70. I like life fast.

I am not consumed by whether Sasha Cohen lands a triple-toe loop or how high the Flying Tomato flies or which team can put the puck in the net the most. For me, these 2006 Winter Olympics are all about two things: the Kandahar Banchetta slopes at Sestriere Borgata and who gets down them the fastest.

Yes, its downhill racing, the 100-meter dash of the Winter Olympics.

For me, this is the one event that has been the most titillating in Winter Olympics passed. Images of Franz Klammer flying recklessly down the Insbruck slopes in 1976 before 60,000 of his Austrian countrymen will never leave me. In downhill, there are no heats, no combined scores. You get only one chance. Despite Klammer's World Cup dominance that year, any of three near wipe-outs would have ended all hope of gold.

For those who need to augment the thrill of speed with that of danger - so-called NASCAR effect enthusiasts - downhill offers crashes at every bump and turn. Everyone has watched countless replays of Hermann Maier's body pinwheeling through two fences that lined the slopes of Nagano in 1998. Even more memorable, he picked himself up, dusted off the snow, walked 200 meters back uphill to the start house, and went on to win gold medals in the giant slaloms and Super-G later in the week.

Granted, no moment in downhill racing history can displace the 1980 U.S. Men's Hockey gold in America's heart. However, Bill Johnson did provide a patriotic encore four years later in Sarajevo. At the first Olympics hosted on communist soil, Johnson's downhill run gave the U.S. its first alpine gold ever. A decade later, Tommy Moe won gold at the Men's Downhill in Lillehammer.

As my son and I watched Sunday's broadcast, coverage switched to my declared favorite almost on queue. It became clear the Cubs will win their next World Series before America sees its next downhill gold.

Imagine being the junior U.S. Ski Team member sent to Bode Miller's trailer on Sunday morning. The man who opened the world's eyes to the joys of drunk skiing had not yet opened his own.

The young protégé probably dismissed the news buzzing through Olympic Village of Miller's late Saturday night binge. Bode's absence at the morning's course inspection would in no way corroborate such gossip. There was undoubtedly a good reason. Perhaps Bode was still fixing a busted cable on his portable BowFlex.

The gofer's knock must have set the occupant - or occupants - inside in motion. A sound of feet shoveling through empty beer cans, followed by a flush of the toilet, ushers forth. Unlike home, trailers are equipped with indoor plumbing.

The gofer still waits outside. Under the steps, he notices two empty cardboard boxes lying on the ground. He muses how they're roughly the shape in which new skis might have been shipped. Of course, seasoned skiers would never use equipment for the first time on Gold Medal Sunday.

He looks at his watch. Only an hour until race time.

The trailer door flies open. Bode steps out as the virgin sunlight pierces his brain. Behind him, the door rebounds off the corrugated siding and closes neatly shut. Off to the races.

Through four splits, Miller holds the second-fastest time .08 of a second off the leader. Then, below the tree line, problems developed. On the Daytona turn, Miller finds himself in what he terms a bad "aerodynamic position" and can't find enough speed along Walchhofer. Indeed, the human body is not at its most aerodynamic when fighting back retch-induced spasms.

In the end, Bode falls to fourth position. Cameras pan to the starting house where teammate Daron Rahlves, the recipient of the contents of that second cardboard box lying under Miller's front steps, frantically switches out of the same skis Bode has just worn. Sure, Daron, the skis were the culprit.

As we watched the antics of the U.S. Alpine Ski Team's open dressing room, I reflected on how far the program has fallen with its 2002 disappointments and 2006 comedies. I questioned to myself where it might be in 2010.

Next to me, my son formulated another question he dared not ask. Dad, you never partied like that skier, did you?

-SFM-

Bob Ekstrom is a columnist for SportsFan Magazine, where this column first ran.

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