Shiffrin wins super-G gold; Vonn crashes
ARE, Sweden — As Mikaela Shiffrin hopped atop the podium to celebrate another gold medal,
Lindsey Vonn was nearby on the sidelines of the finish area, stretching her ailing knees and explaining just how she wound up entangled in a safety net halfway down the course.
Definitive proof, not that it was really needed, of a passing of the baton in American — and world — ski racing.
With a daring and often wild run, Shiffrin won the super-G by 0.02 seconds at the skiing world championships Tuesday for her first medal in a speed event at a major championship.
She has now won a gold medal at four straight worlds. Coming in a season when she has been virtually unbeatable in the World Cup, she is unmistakably the queen of ski racing.
For Vonn, it was an afternoon that made her question her decision to return for one last bid for a title before retirement.
Racing straight after Shiffrin, Vonn was already 0.08 behind her compatriot at the first checkpoint when, off balance after misreading the roll on the crown of a hill, she straddled a gate mid-air, landed heavily on her right side, crashed her head against left arm, and went careening into the safety nets to the left of the course.
Medical personnel tended to Vonn for a few minutes before the world’s most famous ski racer got to her feet, put on her skis, and went down the hill unaided. She looked groggy and in pain as she performed a slew of post-race interviews, but seemed better a few hours later.
“I’ve got a bit of a shiner,” Vonn said, showing the right side of her face. “I feel like I’ve been hit by an 18-wheeler.”
“My immediate thought,” she added, “was, `What the hell, why am I in the fence again?’ It was like, `Why am I here? I’m too old for this.“’
A positive sign was the way she spoke about still being a contender in the downhill on Sunday, in what will be the final race of her storied career.
“Don’t count me out,” said Vonn, the winner of a women’s record of 82 World Cup races. “I’ve got one more chance. Maybe I’ll pull off a miracle, maybe I won’t.”
Shiffrin, a two-time Olympic champion, is now a four-time world champion and a five-time medalist at the worlds, to go with her 56 World Cup victories. That puts her 26 wins behind Vonn on the alltime list and 30 behind men’s record holder Ingemar Stenmark.