No American skier has gone into an Olympics as heavily favored as Lindsey Vonn, nor has any created so much excitement off the slopes. Get ready for the Vonn-derful Vancouver Games.
She has become, as Sports Illustrated proclaimed last week, “America’s best woman skier ever.” She has built her fame in the glamour event of the Winter Games, downhill, a dangerous dance with gravity and insane speed that at times produces frightful carnage. Yet she comes off like the girl next door who rips down mountains faster than a mile a minute.
“They couldn’t ask for a better role model,” former Olympic champion Picabo Street said. “She’s tall and beautiful and strong and powerful and humble.”
But, she’s also injured.
Vonn revealed Wednesday that she has a badly bruised right shin that she injured Feb. 2 in a training run in Austria. The injury casts doubt about whether she can deliver on her enormous promise. (As of presstime for this story, it was uncertain how it might affect Vonn.)
No American has won more than two alpine medals at the same Olympics, and Vonn, at least before her injury, was projected to have an excellent chance to win three. She was also the prohibitive gold-medal favorite in the downhill and super-G and figured to be a strong medal contender in combined. A medal in slalom wouldn’t be a shock — if she is healthy. Only in giant slalom has she not been a contender.
While it may be tempting to draw comparisons between her and Beijing Olympics swimming hero Michael Phelps, it would be unfair, as injuries are common and ski conditions are notoriously unpredictable.
“When you dive in a pool, the only thing that may be different is the temperature of the water,” Street said. “The resistance of the water never changes, so you have a predictable environment.”
World class ski racing is anything but predictable. Flying down a mountain on a sheet of ice in constantly changing weather makes for unlikely heroes. Depending on the snow or rain or fog, courses get faster, slower or bumpier in a hurry. Start numbers become significant.
Look back no further than the men’s downhill at the 2006 Turin Olympics. The favorites were Hermann Maier and Michael Walchhofer of Austria, and Daron Rahlves and Miller from the U.S. Almost no one was talking about Antoine Deneriaz of France, who had a grand total of three World Cup victories in his career. He hadn’t been on a podium in a year.
Late in the race, moments before Deneriaz got into the starting gate, a cloud momentarily hid the sun. The track froze and got faster. It may have become only a fraction of a second faster, but that’s all it takes to win in downhill. Deneriaz knocked Walchhofer out of the lead by 0.72 of a second and claimed the gold. He never made another podium on the World Cup and retired two years later.
“The toughest thing about ski racing is all the variables,” Vonn said before revealing her injury this week. “I haven’t given any thought to even the possibility of winning more than one medal at the Olympics, because it’s going to be really, really tough. I can get a gust of wind or the weather could change.”
In 2008, the last time Vonn raced downhill on the course in Whistler where the Olympics will be held, she finished second to Switzerland’s Nadia Styger by 0.01 of a second. In a race that covered 1.8 miles, with speeds exceeding 65 mph, Styger effectively beat Vonn by 11 inches. And that was the season Vonn won her first World Cup downhill title.
Street is well-remembered for the gold medal she won at the 1998 Nagano Olympics after coming back from a severe knee injury sustained in Vail 14 months earlier. Most forget the winning margin in that race also was 0.01 of a second. And it wasn’t in her best event (downhill). It was in super-G. You have to be good, but you need luck too.
“You’re in a tuck, you’re coming around the corner, you’re going 55 mph and all of a sudden you get a head wind?” Street said. “And you can win or lose by one one-hundredth of a second? You’re toast at that point. It’s over.”
But if her shin cooperates, Vonn clearly has advantages that have made her all but unbeatable this year in downhill and super-G. She has a world-class instinct for speed that became apparent shortly after she entered her teens. She is the fittest woman on the tour, “by far” in the opinion of Street. She has one of the world’s premier ski technicians, Austrian Heinz Haemmerle, so she can count on her skis being fast.
She also has all sorts of people pulling for her. There are the kids in the Vail Valley who idolize her. There is Street, who took Vonn under her wing when their careers overlapped a decade ago. And there is Cindy Nelson, the first U.S. woman to win a World Cup downhill in 1974 and bronze medalist at the 1976 Olympics.
“She’s such a perfect role model that, if I was a parent with children, I’d be all over it,” said Nelson, who has lived in the Eagle Vail area since 1979. “I’d put them in front of the TV, I’d put them in front of the Universal Sports online streaming stuff, and let them watch her. She’s paving a way for U.S. alpine ski racing. She’s the one who’s going to drive it forward.”
Nelson remembers watching Jean-Claude Killy and Karl Schranz race in the 1968 Olympics on her black-and-white TV and thinking, “If I could do that, it would be so cool.” She knows Vonn has that kind of influence, because she’s seen Vonn sign autographs for awestruck youngsters.
“My fingers are crossed,” Nelson said. “I say my prayers that she stays healthy, and she just shows the world her greatness. It’s beyond ski racing, what she can do, the impact she can have upon many people. I give her all the praise I have.”
Missing out on medals
A look at how Lindsey Vonn performed at past Olympic Games:
2002 Salt Lake City
Results: Seventh in combined, 32nd in slalom
Comment: Only 17 years old
2006 Turin
Results: Eighth in downhill, did not finish combined, seventh in super-G, 14th in slalom
Comment: Competed despite injuries from a downhill training crash
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
