By Alan Baldwin
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Lindsey Vonn will be in the spotlight more than ever as the injured U.S. Alpine ski great attempts the seemingly impossible on the speed slopes at the Milano Cortina Olympics.
Teammate Mikaela Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup skier of all time, will be centre stage later on but the immediate attention will be on 41-year-old Vonn and whether she can overcome a serious knee injury.
The American has climbed mountains already, launching an improbable comeback in 2024 after six years out and soaring to astonishing success this season.
Now, with the world watching and on the biggest stage of all, the 2010 downhill champion will try to take her battered body down Cortina d’Ampezzo’s gleaming Olimpia delle Tofane piste.
On Tuesday Vonn revealed she had ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, an injury that might be considered season or even career-ending, in a crash in Crans-Montana last Friday — the final downhill before the Games.
“I know what my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same as it stands today, but I know there’s still a chance. And as long as there’s a chance, I will try,” she said.
Until then it had looked like Vonn would have a ready throne in a swish resort known as the “Queen of the Dolomites”.
A standout star on and off the slopes, taking the sport to audiences far beyond the snowline, Vonn has delivered two wins, a second place and two thirds in five completed downhills this season.
No other speed skier comes close for consistency and Cortina is a piste where she has enjoyed record success and had hoped to become Alpine skiing’s oldest Olympic medallist.
Emma Aicher and Austria’s Cornelia Hutter have been two of her biggest rivals, with the former seeking Germany’s first Alpine gold medal since 2014, and will fancy their chances.
SHIFFRIN DOMINANT IN SLALOM
It would be astonishing if Shiffrin, winner of seven out of eight slaloms this season with a second place in the other, fails to get on the podium.
Yet memories of Beijing 2022, and a failure to win any medals, provide a rare element of uncertainty around the winner of a record 108 World Cup races.
The giant slalom is another story, too.
A grisly crash in Killington, Vermont, in November 2024 left Shiffrin suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after sustaining a puncture wound in her abdomen and severe muscle damage.
The American had to wait until January 24 for her first podium of the season in giant, a third place in Spindleruv Mlyn, with Austria’s Julia Scheib leading Switzerland’s Camille Rast in the World Cup standings.
Rast is also the only skier to have beaten Shiffrin in slalom this season.
New Zealander Alice Robinson is another medal contender after winning two giants and a super-G and could become the first Alpine gold medallist from the Southern Hemisphere.
Italy will look mostly to the speed disciplines for medals, with 2018 downhill champion and serial Cortina winner Sofia Goggia triumphant in super-G this season and Nicol Delago in downhill, although Italian-born Lara Colturi could challenge for Albania in slalom.
Federica Brignone, “The Tiger”, will be hoping for an emotional last flash of magic at the age of 35 after recovering from multiple leg fractures and torn knee ligaments.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
Comments