Saving the best for last, this was utterly fantastic. Okay, so maybe there was an air of unreality about the big guns sliding one-by-one out of contention to let him in. But the excellence of his own skiing - remember he was given the hopeless start number of 20 - was no fluke.
Simon Clegg, the team chef de mission, admitted that he thought he'd never see the day we won a skiing medal, never mind one in the slalom discipline which is regarded as the true test of technical mastery on the piste. Him and everyone else, including the Canadian reporter who suggested that, never mind the fact that there'd been no UFOs spotted over Utah this past fortnight, this sighting of a blue-haired Brit with bronze quite made up for it.
This initial novelty value will pay Baxter handsomely. Schwaiger has noted these past two years, as his charge has "become an overnight success after 10 years slog", how Baxter has become far more celebrated in Austria than back at home.
"I've seen 50,000 at Schladming cheering for a dozen Austrians and one Highlander," he smiles.
Yet with an Olympic gong to his name, the man who used to be so impoverished while trekking round the mountains that he'd have to sleep in a battered Volkswagen Passat to save on hotel bills is poised to belatedly join the skiing jet set.
New, untapped, unprecedented markets have magically opened up for the 28-year-old. Fiona McNeilly, the operations director of the British Skiing Federation, reckoned here was someone-who, at last, could be a figurehead for the domestic skiing tourism industry.
In Austria too, ski manufacturers would be keen to sponsor a guy with a story like his.
"Someone raised in a non-Alpine world, a genuine Scot who isn't from a wealthy background, who isn't a hooray Henry, but is personable, charismatic, good looking and, against all the odds, has made it," reflected McNeilly.
Ultimately, though, like the other two British medallists here, it is not what the Olympics can do for Baxter but what Baxter can do for Britain's Olympic future which consumes both him and his backers.
"We have a lot more talented young skiers who could achieve a lot more if they had more funding and support, and that's what I want to see," said Baxter.
Otherwise, it really will be a one winter wonder. Schwaiger chose the moment to call for a complete restructuring of the British system "so we can bring kids into the mountains and educate the coaches".
In Turin four years hence, he said, youthful talents like Chemmy Alcott and Ross Green, both of whom enjoyed top 15 finishes here, could be flowering. After that, though, it looked bleak.
If he can't be the totem for a new generation, then we should celebrate Baxter for just being a one-off. A man who would lay fencing and dig holes as a labourer just to fund a distant dream; a man who came perilously close to crashing into the trees in a fearful training accident last Wednesday yet dusted himself down, ignored his injured knee and completed the races of his life just three days later.
Blind determination is the common thread which distinguished all our medallists here - be it the sacrifice of a mum like Rhona Martin, who didn't see her kids for months, or the cussedness of Alex Coomber, who suffered more injuries in the months leading up to Salt Lake than anyone should need to endure. And those few who show the right stuff in the white stuff merit a nation's support.
Clegg wants cash for future teams WINTER OLYMPICS GUIDE Medal Table
