Vonn proves she is still a force to reckon with
FOUR-TIMES OVERALL WORLD CUP WINNER WINS HER THIRD WORLD CUP RACE OF SEASON
American Lindsey Vonn provided another timely reminder that she will still be a force to be reckoned with at this month’s Pyeongchang Olympics by winning a shortened downhill at Garmisch yesterday, the 80th World Cup win of her career.
The four-times overall World Cup winner pipped Italian Sofia Goggia by two hundredths of a second to win her third World Cup race of the season. Austrian Cornelia Huetter was third, 0.13 seconds behind Vonn.
It was a second successive downhill win for the 33-yearold American - gold medallist in the event at the Vancouver Games in 2010 - after Cortina two weeks ago.
Vonn’s compatriot Jacqueline Wiles was airlifted to hospital by helicopter after a nasty crash and there was no immediate news on her condition. Laurenne Ross, another American, slipped and crashed into a flag but got up and walked away, The race was originally scheduled to be run over two legs on a short course, a format known as a sprint downhill, but this had to be changed after bad weather forced training sessions to be cancelled on Thursday and Friday.
As downhill races cannot be held without training, organisers decided to stage a practice run earlier on Saturday followed by a single-leg race.
Vonn was outside Goggia’s time at the third intermediate point but clawed back vital seconds as she finished in one minute 12.84 seconds.
The build-up to the last World Cup downhill races before the Pyeongchang Olympics has been just as rough as Lindsey Vonn’s up-and-down season.
After waiting for hours for a second straight day on Friday, the American standout and her competitors had to leave the Kandahar course again without skiing on it.
The effects of the bad weather that postponed and ultimately cancelled training on Thursday were still an issue the next day as the rain had left too many spots of weakened snow to make a safe run possible.
And safety has been a main priority for Vonn approaching the Olympics, with the February 17 super-G and the February 21 downhill in South Korea less than three weeks away. “In general my confidence is high, my body feels relatively good,” Vonn said. “I am just not thinking about injuries. As long as my confidence is good and I am able to ski the way I want to, which I am, then I am not concerned.”
Vonn badly damaged her right knee skiing in a patch of soft snow at the world championships in 2013, and the 2010 Olympic downhill champion ultimately missed the Sochi Games the following year.
While Vonn has got 40 of her record 79 career World Cup wins in the discipline, she has won only one downhill since triumphing in the German resort just over a year ago.
She finally won again two weeks ago in Italy. And in another downhill the day before, she was runner-up to Sofia Goggia, the Italian who also beat her twice in test events on the Olympic hill in March 2017.
Last week in Switzerland, Vonn led a combined event after the opening super-G portion before finishing fourth.
“I feel really good coming into this last weekend before the Olympics,” Vonn said. “Cortina was an amazing weekend, Lenzerheide was equally good. I was really happy with my super-G run and my slalom. For only skiing (slalom) one day in the last five months, it was pretty solid.”
It seems like Vonn has been finding her form at the right time. Apart from winning a super-G in December, the first three months of her World Cup season were rather disappointing, marred by two crashes in Lake Louise, Alberta, a jarred back in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and a recurrent knee issue in Val d’Isere, France.