Bormio will forever remain a special place for Spela Pretnar, the best technical skier in Slovenia's 10-year-old ski racing history. Five years after having celebrated there her first of six World Cup wins, she became the first alpine racer from her young country to clinch a World Cup title.

With four wins and several top-3 results, the 27-year-old skier from the beautiful town of Bled beat France's Christel Saioni after a tough and spectacular season-long fight. They had tied for first place in the opening slalom race at Copper Mountain, Colorado, in November and they were by far the most consistent until the last race at Bormio. The most aggressive skier in second runs, Spela excelled on all kinds of slopes - flat ones, Copper Mountain, Maribor, Berchtesgaden or Santa Caterina, and steep ones, Sestriere and Are.

In the 1980s, other skiers from the region of Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital, also won slalom World Cup titles - Rok Petrovic in 1986 and Bojan Krizay in 1987 - when they were still competing for the Republic of Yugoslavia, as was the 1989 slalom World Champion Mateja Svet. Svet also captured seven World Cup races and several medals at the 1987 World Championships at Crans-Montana. In 1995, Pretnar was one of the best GS specialists on the tour but now she excels in slalom thanks to her determination and her perfectly suited, shorter, Rossignol skis.

Ironically, Spela's best season ever almost didn't start. Disappointed by her failure to win a medal at the 1999 World Championships in Vail after clocking the best intermediate time in the 2nd slalom run, she was about to give up ski racing. Even her sweet revenge at Are, where she won her first slalom two weeks after straddling that slalom gate at Vail, could not motivate her again.

In fact she skipped the first training camp because she was planning to go to the US and study economics. Fortunately, she changed her mind and worked hard the following summer, ultimately reaching her best form since 1995.

In 1996 and 1997, Pretnar faced some difficult moments after having broken her left leg for the fourth time while training in Austria in May 1995. She needed almost two years to totally recover from this bad spill. In September 1997, she broke her right hand and lost several weeks of training, though still managed to earn two 3rd place slalom finishes in Bormio in January 1998. She didn't finish the Nagano Olympic races at Shiga Kogen.

In November 1999, she was infected by a virus and didn't fully recover until the end of the season. St. Anton will be her fourth World Championships since Morioka, Japan, where she reached a promising 6th place in GS and a 7th in super G.

Pretnar hasn't been as lucky in medal events. In 1992, she was disqualified in GS because she lost her start number before the second run. In 1994, she clocked the fastest intermediate time in super G at Kvitfjell and then crashed in the last steep part.

At 27, she has the maturity and the potential to win more big races this season. A very outgoing person, Spela works in the off-season as a reporter and an announcer for a private Slovenian TV station. In the off-season, Pretnar likes to golf and waterski.