At the relatively young age of 25, Vail’s Lindsey Vonn has established herself as the most accomplished ski racer in U.S. history by nearly every objective criteria.
She just won her third consecutive World Cup overall title and, barring injury, just might double that total before she’s through. She holds the U.S record for World Cup wins for a career (33) and a season (11).
The only meaningful category in which others have her beaten is Olympics medals. Bode Miller just raised the bar there, bringing his total to five. Julia Mancuso is second on the list with three, one more than Vonn.
I have no doubt Vonn will continue to get better. But what about Mancuso? Will she do the things this offseason that it takes to be great?
By winning two silver medals in Vancouver — she already had a gold medal in 2006 — Mancuso once again showed she is a talented athlete who is always dangerous at big events. But she struggled on the World Cup circuit the past three seasons while Vonn dominated.
Back in November, I asked U.S. women’s head coach Jim Tracy if he thought Mancuso looked at Vonn’s accomplishments — including a pair of gold medals at last year’s world championships — and contemplated how hard Vonn worked in the offseason to become the fittest woman on the tour, and realized maybe she needed to work harder.
“Absolutely,” Tracy said. “Julia, she won’t show it, because she’ll try to be herself. But you go behind closed doors, and sure, every athlete will think, ‘Have I worked as hard as the person who just won the gold medal?’ You have to have those goals in mind, and you do have to sacrifice.”
At the start of every World Cup season, Vonn says she’s fitter than ever. She understands the more she accomplishes, the bigger the target on her back gets. She is driven to improve and pursue big goals.
Mancuso likes medals, but she has never been as single- minded as Vonn. A couple of summers ago, she skipped most of an on-snow U.S. Ski Team training camp in New Zealand to work for NBC at the Beijing Olympics. I can’t imagine Vonn doing that.
“If you’re a gold medalist, you seem to gain 300 new friends and everybody wants a part of you,” Tracy said. “It’s hard. You really have to be strong to manage that stuff. Before you know it, sometimes you can be overcome, and your focus for your main goals kind of gets put on the back burner.”
The jealousy Mancuso expressed toward Vonn during the Vancouver Olympics, plus Mancuso’s success there, made me wonder if we might see a more formidable Mancuso next season. Apparently she wants what Vonn has. The way to get it is to be better than Vonn.
But to do that she’s going to have to work as hard, and be ready to compete every week, rather than saving her fire for big events.
Wouldn’t it be great for skiing in the U.S. if Vonn and Mancuso were duking it out atop the World Cup standings? They’re the same age and have been rivals since their early teen years. Mancuso won seven medals at world juniors championships, five of them gold, while Vonn was claiming three medals (none gold). Mancuso won two world championships medals in 2005. Vonn won her first two in 2007.
Since then, Vonn has dominated women’s skiing. She has more world championships medals (four) than Mancuso (three) and more world championships gold medals (two) than Mancuso (none).
Vonn has more World Cup victories (33) than Mancuso (four), more World Cup podiums (64) than Mancuso (20) and more World Cup discipline titles (six) than Mancuso (none).
Mancuso has had back problems that limited what she could do, but she appears to have that problem under control. Perhaps she will emerge from Vancouver a hungrier and more dedicated athlete.
Mancuso can become a threat to Vonn if she wants to be one. But I doubt she ever will outwork Vonn. I don’t think anyone will.
