Vonn targets January for return to racing
“It was brutal to not be there. ... But that’s life, and there will always be next year.” Lindsey Vonn, on missing last weekend’s event in Lake Louise, Alberta, where she has won 18 races
U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn has suffered enough significant injuries that she can sound almost sanguine discussing her latest comeback, from a broken bone suffered in her right arm during a Nov. 10 training run.
She’s confident of a January return, likely by Jan. 27 at the World Cup races in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and in the meantime will try to push the boundaries and parameters set by her longtime physical therapist in an effort to beat that date.
Still, that a physical ailment is keeping Vonn from the slopes and an assault on the all-time record for Alpine ski victories can weigh heavily. And last weekend, knowing the world’s best were competing in her personal playground of Lake Louise, Alberta, was too much to bear.
It was at Lake Louise that 20year-old Vonn claimed her first World Cup victory. And it was at Lake Louise where one year ago she swept all three races for the third time, giving her 18 wins in 41 starts there.
As Vonn stewed in her Vail, Colo., home, the fear of missing out finally got the best of her. She decided a trip to visit her sister and friends in Los Angeles was the wisest course of action.
“I was in the snow, and it was driving me crazy,” Vonn said Monday night at an event hosted by Under Armour. “It was Lake Louise coming up, so I had to get away from it. It was nice to be around my friends and my sister and try to pretend it wasn’t happening, because I love Lake Louise so much.
“It was brutal to not be there, because I worked so hard this summer and was skiing so well and in really great shape. But that’s life, and there will always be next year.”
Vonn, 32, was hoping this year would be incident-free after a strong 2015-16 campaign ended with her suffering three significant knee breaks during a super- G crash in Andorra. But a training crash at Copper Mountain last month dashed those hopes.
Now, Vonn offers a visitor her left hand to shake, wryly notes that she’s graduated to lifting 4-pound dumbbells with her right arm and more than once has incurred the wrath of physical therapist Lindsay Winninger.
Vonn’s recent Snapchat in which she performed one-armed pull-ups stirred great hope among her fans that her rehab was ahead of schedule.
It also drew a series of admonishing phone calls from Winninger.
“I got in trouble with those,” Vonn says. “I was up there, and it felt really good. My therapist wasn’t with me. I want to train harder and work harder. It feels really good, but as (Winninger) stated, the screws and plate could shift, so I should probably not be doing that.
“I know the drill, but I need to exercise a little bit more patience, I suppose. Not my strong suit. But at least it’s my arm and not my leg or knee. I’ve been working with Lindsay for a long time, so she knows me pretty well. Still, if I feel good, I want to do stuff. She’s usually the one who keeps me in check. If she’s not there, I get in trouble.”
The drudgery should end soon. Vonn gets X-rays on her arm every couple weeks and says she plans to begin snow training sometime between Christmas and mid-January.
She acknowledges having to constantly adjust her goals for this season but remains confident she can add to her 76 World Cup wins, the most by a woman and 10 shy of Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark.
While a January return is her goal, the primary focus is being in top form by the world championships, which begin Feb. 6 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. In the meantime, the mental and emotional side of things are just as key.
Vonn drowned some of her Lake Louise ennui last weekend at a holiday party hosted by actor Matt Damon and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, thrilled to get a call from actress Kate Beckinsale with an offer to be her plus-one for the evening.
The two met on a private jet bound for the American Music Awards last spring, Vonn noting that she was traveling alone and Beckinsale “was nice enough to come up and talk to me.”
Indeed, Vonn’s means to drown her sorrows are not like most others’, but that doesn’t make separation from the slopes any easier.
“It’s nice to have that support system,” she says of her sister and friends in Los Angeles. “If I’m just sitting there home alone, stewing about not racing, it’s only going to make me more frustrated.
“I’ve got to just keep my mind and try to still enjoy life and still work hard but not dwell on it.”
Fortunately for Vonn, the wait is almost over.