Vonn ends career with another medal
Lindsey Vonn walked off with her career haul of medals in her right hand, the gold, silver and bronze clinking together, almost weighing her down.
Or was that clinking sound the bulging knee braces and metal support rods inside her vast array of broken bones? Whatever it was, the sound was a reminder of what Vonn has come to symbolize — an athlete who battled back from one major injury after another to win more ski races than any other woman.
Add one final comeback to the list. Five days after crashing in super-G and three months after tearing a ligament in her left knee, Vonn won the bronze medal in the world championship downhill Sunday in the final race of her career.
She has shed so many tears that there are none left — just like she no longer has any cartilage in her knees.
“I’m literally tapped out, I can’t cry anymore,” Vonn said. “I want to cry, but it’s dry ... Of course I’m sore. Even before the crash I was sore,” Vonn said. “… But at the end of the day, no one cares if my neck hurts; they only care if I win.”
Vonn had been planning on retiring in December, but she recently moved up her plans due to persistent pain in both of her surgically repaired knees. Then came the superG crash, when she straddled a gate in mid-air, flew face first down the mountain and slammed into the safety nets.
“She has been business as usual this whole week, saying I’m racing to win,” Karin Kildow, Vonn’s sister, said. “I was like, ‘Just maybe make it down and maybe stand up.’ But she was like, ‘No, I’m going full out.’” It’s a medal that brings Vonn full circle: the American’s two silvers at the 2007 worlds on the same course were the first two major championship medals of her career.
“I was weighing in my mind the risk of putting it all out there, crashing and getting injured again as opposed to finishing where I wanted to,” Vonn said.
As soon as she exited the finish area, Vonn embraced Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark, the only skier to win more World Cup races than she did — 86 to 82. “I basically begged him to come here via text, in all caps, many exclamation points,” Vonn said. “He’s an icon and a legend in our sport and he doesn’t really like the spotlight, but he deserves to have it. I was just so grateful that he was there. Honestly, it’s a perfect ending to my career.”
Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia took gold, defending her title from the 2017 worlds. Stuhec finished 0.23 seconds ahead of silver-medallist Corinne Suter of Switzerland and 0.49 ahead of Vonn. Canada’s Roni Remme was 28th.