Up and up she went, shooting up the halfpipe's 7.6-metre wall, launching into the sky, spinning and twisting in a mid-air ballet that's barely a blur to the naked eye.
She did this six times and when Brita Sigourney finally fell to earth, she'd landed right on the Pyeongchang Olympic podium.
Her impressive final run in Tuesday's women's freestyle skiing halfpipe at Phoenix Snow Park locked up the bronze medal.
It was the 11th medal for the United States at these Olympics.
Sigourney came out of the gates strongly in Tuesday's three-round final, posting the opening round's third-best score, an 89.80.
That stood as Sigourney's top mark until the final run, which she started in fourth place.
Her US teammate Annalisa Drew had just earned a 90.80, temporarily putting her in position for a medal.
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Sigourney needed a big run and left nothing to chance, going higher and bigger and impressing the judges enough to earn a 91.60.
Canada's Cassie Sharpe posted the day's top score of 95.80 to win gold, while France's Marie Martinod, the 33-year-old who took silver four years ago at the Sochi Games, again finished in second with a score of 92.60.
For Sigourney, Tuesday marked the apex of a long journey in her sport.
The 28-year-old from Carmel, California, turned in a sixth-place finish four years ago in Sochi. Her top performance at world championships was a sixth-place finish and that came back in 2011.
Her best finishes at the Winter X Games included a pair of silvers. Her second came just last month in Aspen, Colorado, a full seven years since her first second-place finish there.
"I've been working on the mental game all year and it's definitely paid off," said Sigourney, who entered Monday's finals with the third-best score from qualifying, 90.60.
"Just having a lot of confidence has helped me over the past few events."
She will happily accept this PyeongChang medal, but she doesn't need a mantel full of awards to know how far she has come.
Her medical charts tell the story: Sigourney has broken her collarbone, torn an anterior cruciate ligament, busted her pelvis, broken her knee cap and torn a ligament in her thumb.
While Drew had to settle for a fourth-place finish, fellow American Maddie Bowman finished last out of the 11 competitors who competed in the finals.
Bowman, who won gold four years ago when the women's halfpipe debuted at the Olympics, took a tumble late in each of her three finals runs.
On the last, she appeared to hit the back of her head on the ground and momentarily laid there still. She had to be helped up by medical personnel, eventually rising to her feet and skiing out of the pipe on her own.
The Washington Post
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