MILAN — Whether in an airplane or on skis, Elizabeth Lemley digs flying upside down.

What’s the crazy appeal to her?

A big shot of adrenaline, Lemley will tell you, before adding: “I love the risk.”

Every Olympics needs a “Rocky” story. An underdog counted out. A champion of the peeps.

This one comes straight outta the Rocky Mountains.

This 20-year-old daredevil from Vail, not predicted by anybody to win gold in the moguls competition, became the Olympic hero that America didn’t know it needed.

“She was a total unknown. We knew she could do it. But nobody else did,” coach John Dowling told The Denver Gazette. “You’re an unknown quantity until you do it. But there’s a lot of power in being an unknown.”

Against a bump-rocking, knee-knocking, high-flying, gravity-defying field of competitors that included defending Olympic champion Jakara Anthony, as well as 2018 gold medalist Perrine Laffont, all Lemley did was post the best freakin’ score of her young life at the biggest moguls competition on the planet.

She gobbled up the moguls like they were Hostess Snoballs. And she flew like a Wallenda off two jumps on the course that launched her toward heaven.

Her 82.30 score proved to be so untouchable it noticeably intimidated the veteran field, forcing Anthony into a costly stumble that ended any chance anyone other than Lemley would stand atop the Olympic podium. Team USA teammate and Colorado native Jaelin Kauf finished second to claim silver.

How did an underdog coming off a long, painful recovery from an ACL injury achieve a feat that stands as an early contender for the biggest upset victory by an American at the Winter Games?

“She skied out of her mind,” said Dowling, a Colorado legend considered the Yoda of mogul skiing.

As we’ve already been harshly reminded during these Games, the line on the ski hill between the medal stand and the hospital is stiletto thin.

And the pressure of coming up big under the glare of the five Olympic rings rather than serving as the agony of defeat for NBC’s television reality show on snow? It’s daunting.

While Lindsey Vonn fell so brutally hard that the left leg she broke in the downhill has required three surgeries and Mikaela Shiffrin must live with her recurring Olympic nightmares until getting back in the start house next week, maybe the advantage of being Lemley was that all of America didn’t see her coming.

Truth be told, after Lemley ripped up her knee late in 2024 during training for last winter’s World Cup schedule, there were times throughout the past 12 months when she wondered if skiing at the Olympics in Italy might have to be a dream deferred.

“Before she got hurt, I thought: ‘Liz is the best girl in the world at skiing moguls.’ But then nobody got to see it,” Dowling said during a telephone interview from the athletes village in the Italian mountain town of Livigno.

“All bets were off. We were still putting the pieces back together even at the start of this season, in terms of how much pain she could handle and how much training she could do. The question was: ‘Can we even compete?’ We had no clue.”

But a desire to push her limits to a place that might well make you or I sick to our tummies seems to be embedded in Lemley’s DNA.

At 9 months old, when most kids are taking their first unsteady baby steps, Lemley was having a blast on skis.

By the time she was 11, Lemley had already begun to master what’s considered a rite of passage for an elite mogul skier. It’s a trick simply called the back full on snow. But there’s nothing simple about it.

The trick is acrobatic madness served cold, requiring a skier to launch forward off a ramp, body fully extended from head to toe, then complete a 360-degree spinning, backward flip. All with a minefield of moguls awaiting as the landing spot.

“She’s lived in rarefied air for a long time,” Dowling said.

Maybe space is her next frontier.

The daughter of a private pilot, Lemley has long been fascinated not only by riding in airplanes, but trying her hand at grabbing the yoke and heading off into the wild blue yonder.

Her favorite type of flying?

“Acrobatics,” she said.

Well, duh. Doesn’t everybody enjoy the G forces of a barrel roll at 10,000 feet above the earth’s surface?

After she puts her mogul skis in the rack, Lemley might entertain working for SpaceX.

To infinity. And beyond.

But after standing the world order of moguls skiing on its head, what did Lemley do to celebrate winning gold?

Well, this is Italy, silly.

So she ordered a pizza. With friends. To share laughs.

No different than your average 20-year-old Coloradan happily addicted to the adrenaline rush of flying upside down.