In the days before skier Julia Mancuso won her silver medal on Wednesday (February 17) with a stellar downhill performance that was topped only by teammate Lindsey Vonn's odds-defying run, she met up with MTV News' very own Sway to teach him all the right and wrong lingo when it comes to talking to the skiers at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Apparently Sway wanted to look cool in front of the other skiers and Julia was nice enough to let him in on their secret language.
"So 'GS' stands for 'giant slalom,' which I guess has bigger turns than slalom," she explained to Sway, who eagerly took in the lesson from the silver medalist. "There's 'Super G,' I guess that's a code word for an event that's like GS, but a little faster."
And then she taught him the most important lesson of all: Do not call them alpine skiers! Okay! "And then I guess another thing, we always say skiing. We never say we're alpine skiers. Like we're ski racers and that's alpine skiing," she warned her student. "Yeah, don't be like 'Are you an alpine skier?' Be like 'You race downhill?'"
With the lesson learned, Julia also shared her secret to victory: "I guess I've always competed in everything and I love it and it takes a little bit of time management especially now with some canceled races," she said. "We're gonna be crammed into a smaller period of time, but I'm still stoked. I'm ready." As her performance on Wednesday proved, she was right.