At a Congressional awards ceremony last Thursday, [Golden]'s decade of achievement was recognized by the Women's Sports Foundation, which named her the recipient of the fifth annual Flo Hyman Award. Golden joins an elite group of past Hyman winners -- Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Evelyn Ashford. Hyman, captain of the 1984 US Olympic volleyball team, died in 1986 of Marfan's Syndrome.

As a little kid, Golden was skiing the formidable steeps of Cannon Mountain in Franconia Notch, N.H., where her parents had a ski house. One day in 1975, while she was walking through the snow to that house, Golden's right leg collapsed beneath her. The diagnosis was bone cancer, and when doctors recommended amputation, she had only one question: "Will I be able to ski again?"

Fitted for an artificial leg she rarely wears these days, and using a single ski at first with outriggers (little skis on the end of poles), Golden was back on the slopes. As she got back into the routine of high school life, it was ski coach Dave Livermore who saw not a young amputee but a young athlete. "He trained me to use my body," says Golden, a powerfully built woman. "He made a huge difference in my life."