MAXIMUM VELOCITY
Lindsey Vonn has built an Olympic career on a simple lifelong passion: ‘ I love going fast’
Speed.
It’s what captivated Lindsey Vonn when she was a little girl in Minnesota, even if the hills she was skiing then were more molehills than mountains. It’s what propelled her to the pinnacle of her sport, arguably the greatest ski racer of all time.
And it’s what keeps bringing her back, despite all the injuries and long having had nothing more to prove.
“I love going fast,” Vonn said, her joy unmistakable as she grinned and let out a big laugh. “When I moved out to Colorado, I was always the person trying to beat all the other kids and going fast.
“It’s fun. Going fast is fun. Every time I get to do a downhill or I’m going fast, I get to the bottom and I’m smiling. I’m grinning ear to ear because it’s just so invigorating. You feel so alive and so fresh and so free.”
Vonn is doing a lot of grinning these days, heading into the Pyeongchang Olympics on one of the hottest streaks of her career. She has won five of her last eight races, including both downhills over theweekend in Garmisch, Germany, and now needs five wins to match Ingemar Stenmark’s all- time-World Cup record.
“It has really been the exact preparation that I was hoping for going into South Korea,” Vonn told the Associated Press after Sunday’s win.
Push a snowball down a mountain and it will find the fastest, most direct route to the bottom. It’s called the fall line, and in ski racing, the objective is to hew as close to it as possible while maintaining control.
It takes technique and skill, of