Vonn makes her debut in Friday’s super-G
Friday will mark Lindsey Vonn’s first race at the PyeongChang Olympics, and it is a definite medal opportunity for her.
Her best event is downhill, but she’s also won a lot of races and some medals in super-G. Of her 81 World Cup victories, 42 have come in downhill vs. 28 in super-G. She has three career world championships medals in super-G vs. four in downhill. Her Olympic medals, both of which came in 2010, are gold in downhill and bronze in super-G.
She crashed in the first super-G of the season Dec. 3 at Canada’s Lake Louise resort, but she won a super-G two weeks later at Val d’Isere, France.
On the course where the Olympic speed races are being held, she finished second twice last year to friendly rival Sofia Goggia of Italy. She was just 0.07 of a second behind Goggia in the downhill and 0.04 behind in super-G.
On the World Cup, Vonn has one of the most impressive records in history with 81 wins — only five behind the all-time record held by Ingemar Stenmark — and four World Cup overall titles, the most of any American. She has a very good record at world championships. She would love to pad her Olympic record, though, standing as it does at only two medals. Two more would be huge for her, and she can get them at these Games.
Under different circumstances, this might have been an opportunity for Mikaela Shiffrin to medal, but she has elected to skip the race.
Other racers to watch: Lara Gut of Switzerland, Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein, Johanna Schnarf of Italy, Anna Veith of Austria, Nicole Schmidhofer of Austria.
7 p.m. Denver time
One run