Ogden, his mustache and his fearless approach are quickly becoming favorites of the sport’s devotees, who scream for him during races through the woods and cities of Europe. His coaches, fearful of stifling his preternatural speed and his still-developing aerobic capacity, have essentially told him to eschew racing tactics, instead letting him “develop in the wild,” as Whitcomb put it.

“It’s too soon to start him in with a conservative approach,” said Whitcomb, who compared Ogden to Steve Prefontaine, the mustachioed middle-distance runner of the 1970s who was famous for his guts-first running style. “Just like Prefontaine, Ben wakes up and says, ‘Today is a good day to die.’”

Money is the simplest explanation for why both teams boil down to a unicorn-style star and a mostly younger cohort of athletes with promise who are still developing.

For roughly a dozen years, beginning in the mid-2000s, the U.S. Alpine team invested mainly in its top skiers, forcing developing skiers to cover a significant portion of their expenses. Shiffrin, the child of ski racers whose at-home tutelage and talent made her a wealthy world champion at 17 and an Olympic champion at 18, could manage on her own, but nearly everyone else her age could not. Might there have been other rare, later-blooming talents who turned away from the sport too soon because of its expense? U.S. skiing will never know.

Similarly, the cross-country team for years survived on a bare-bones budget. Only after the success of Kikkan Randall, who in 2012 became the first American woman to win a World Cup discipline title, and Diggins, who teamed with Randall for a world championship when she was just 21, did the national federation begin to invest more heavily in the sport. Ogden, Kern, who is 25, and Sophia Laukli, who is 22 and achieved her first career podium at the Tour de Ski in January, are among the fruits of that investment.