Behold "The Iceman"

You might not be able to rattle off Hermann Maier's Olympic and World Cup racing successes. But even if you are the most casual of ski fans, one of those who tunes in every four years when the Winter Games are on TV, you probably know about the ski racer nicknamed the Herminator, and even how he is built -- and would ramrod down the course -- like a truck. A very fast truck.

You might not be able to remember off the top of your head how many gold medals Jean-Claude Killy won at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games but you probably know his name. (He won three golds at those Games.)

You might not be able to recite where it was that Franz Klammer turned in that insanely on-the-edge run to win Olympic gold in the downhill but you surely recall his name and have seen more than once that legendary black-and-white television clip. (It was from the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck).

The list of European ski racers who by virtue of talent and circumstance have broken through to become personalities known to the casual American sports fan is, indeed, slim.

Carlo Janka.

Remember the name.

Come Vancouver and the 2010 Winter Olympics, he might yet be the next European big thing.

Janka completed the most unexpected triple here Sunday, winning the giant slalom in weather so awful that most everybody here was sprinting for their cars as the last notes of the Swiss national anthem were sounding, the rush on to get to the Denver airport before getting socked in by a snowstorm predicted to dump a foot or more of snow on the state of Colorado.

Janka, who is 23 years old, had won the downhill on Saturday.

He had won the super-combined on Friday.

He is the first racer to win three consecutive races here on the perilous Birds of Prey course since Maier did it -- and that was back in 1999.

Coming into this season, most thought that Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal, the 2009 World Cup overall winner, was the skier (male division, European category) perhaps best positioned to become a breakout star in Vancouver.

Now comes Janka.

Svindal had been the last racer to win three consecutive World Cup races -- in 2007. That season Svindal won the World cup overall title.

It's very early in the 2010 season. Even so, Janka stands atop the overall standings. Svindal, who finished third here Sunday in the GS, third Saturday in the downhill, asked if he and Janka were "head to head," answered, "I would say he's a couple heads ahead of me, at least."

Svindal also said, and this is an important recognition, "I think Carlo making a name for himself is very good for the sport. You need guys like him. There are a lot of sports fighting for attention."

Janka is not given to excitement. You see it in his personality. You see it in his skiing. "I am just skiing in the moment," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

American Ted Ligety, the 2006 Olympic combined champion who finished fourth here Sunday, echoed, "He's definitely a strong kid. He doesn't do anything crazy special with his skiing. He just doesn't make mistakes."

There's a reason consistency is the thing coaches -- no matter the sport -- are always preaching.

Consistency wins.

Ligety also observed, "Janka's skiing has been pretty incredible. It's crazy to see how well he did here."

Janka's Swiss teammate, Didier Cuche, second here Saturday in the downhill, said of the younger racer, and coming from Cuche this is something special indeed: "He is the man."

You get to be the man one way, and one way only -- by earning it.

At a World Cup race in Lake Louise, Canada, late last November, Janka -- coming out of the 65th starting slot, meaning the end part of the start list -- finished second in the downhill. Two weeks after that, he won his first World Cup race, a giant slalom at Val d'Isere, France.

A month later, at Wengen, Switzerland, he won the super-combined.

That was mere prelude to the 2009 world championships this past February, back in Val d'Isere. There he took bronze in the downhill, gold in the giant slalom.

Something had clearly clicked. "It's a bit of talent and the rest is work," Janka said.

This summer, though, he was laid up with a mystery virus -- it remains a mystery -- and hardly trained.

"I want to have the same virus he had this summer," Cuche cracked.

That Janka could go three-for-three here at the Birds of Prey, Cuche said, is all the more remarkable: "It's one of the most challenging courses we have seen on the World Cup tour, with Kitzbuehel, with Bormio, with Wengen," locales whose very names echo with history and, for the racers, icy danger.

"I'm quite a bit nervous before the start of Birds of Prey and it's a sign it's a really challenging course," Cuche said.

"Carlo is The Iceman. He doesn't get nervous."

Cuche is 35; Vancouver is likely to mark his last appearance under the Olympic spotlight. He is such a class act and such a great skier -- silver in Nagano in 1998 in super-G, the current super-G world champion -- that anyone who follows alpine racing would feel justice had been served if he were to seize the moment in Vancouver.

But, assuming no injury, he – and everyone else – is going to have to get past Janka.

"I'm sure he doesn't really need to learn something from me," Cuche said after Saturday's downhill. "He has such instinct. He has it in the blood. I told him in the finish I would like to go back 10 years and have the same God's gift.

Carlo Janka -- remember the name.