How to confront your fear: Olympic skier and Salt Lake City contender Picabo Street explains how a devastating accident taught her to deal with dread instead of trying to deny it. (On My Mind).(Brief Article)

* For almost my entire life, I didn't understand the meaning of the word fear. Because I was a downhill ski racer, this worked to my advantage--instead of feeling afraid when standing at the starting gate at the beginning of every competition, I only focused on how fast I would go and how many people I would beat. But after suffering a horrible ski accident in 1998, I began to feel vulnerable to fright for the first time. I soon realized that I had to learn how to deal with my dread if I would ever be able to race again.

I was just a little girl when my formerly fearless self first emerged. I grew up in a tiny community where most of the other kids were boys, so I played tackle football and shot BB guns just like them. When I got my first skis at the age of 7, getting hurt wasn't a concern for me. On my first run on the beginner slopes, I hurled myself downhill, instead of slowly making turns like I had been told to do.

Later, as I made my way up the ski-racing ranks, I was often asked how I dealt with the fear that usually accompanies my dangerous sport. My response: "I can't answer that because I don't experience it." Then in March 1998, only a month after winning a gold medal at the Olympics in Nagano, Japan, I abruptly fell off my indomitable pedestal. I was competing in Switzerland and went flying into a fence at 60 miles per hour, snapping my left femur in two and shredding my right knee. I had never been in so much pain.

I spent the next two years recovering, and that experience changed me in many ways. At first, as I hobbled around on crutches for a year, I felt weak and useless. Then as my body began to heal, I underwent some mental changes as well. I started to become a little more tentative--for instance, I slowed down when driving, although I always used to do it at top speed. I also became more compassionate about other people's fears, which I used to scoff at. When I got back on the slopes, I ...