(CNN) -- They have barely met, lead lives a world apart and did not speak for two years. But Emma Lundell has made Mikaela Shiffrin cry, and Shiffrin has given Lundell hope. Lundell is a 13-year-old Swedish girl. Shiffrin is an Olympic champion ski racer, one of the finest the United States has ever produced. The story begins in Ã…re, Sweden, in December 2012. A night slalom, under the lights, five days before Christmas. Shiffrin, then 17 years old, raced to her first-ever World Cup victory that night. In the whirlwind of celebrations, interviews and emotion that followed, she would have every reason to forget the details.
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Olympic ski champion Mikaela Shiffrin forms bond with Swedish girl
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Emma Lundell was 11 and suffering from leukemia when she met Shiffrin
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Lundell, now 13, is recovering well and hails Shiffrin as her inspiration
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Shiffrin says Lundell reminds her of the impact she and her sport can have
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I remember doing the press conference, doing the award ceremony, and then immediately meeting @placeholder.
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"We were walking away when @placeholder said, 'Oh, I should give my winners' bouquet to Emma.'
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When she met @placeholder, she came away with a new hero.
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Healthy, happy @placeholder, with a video message for her idol (it had been the newspaper's idea).
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"You gave me the energy to carry on," @placeholder tells her in the message, "to keep fighting to beat the cancer.
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Eileen Shiffrin, who was in the room when @placeholder saw the message, could not believe the transformation in the girl they had met two years earlier.
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A month after seeing that message, @placeholder tells CNN: "That video brought so many emotions to the surface that I didn't even know I was feeling up until that point.
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@placeholder acknowledges she has an important role to play in how she, as a prominent athlete, addresses cancer and supports victims.
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"Sometimes it feels like an obligation, more like a burden, and then I get these eye-opening experiences like meeting @placeholder -- then more than two years later, getting that message.
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@placeholder's battle goes on: the chemotherapy is over but she will not get the all-clear for four more years.