SOELDEN, Austria — Last Thursday I made my first appearance on David Letterman’s show, and I thought it went really well.
I always get nervous before going on live TV shows. But he made a joke about all the different ski disciplines and all the different slaloms, and it was really funny.
It wasn’t an extremely funny interview, just kind of a chat. I liked that there weren’t any personal questions. It was all about skiing and how I’ve done so far this season.
I found out his son has just started skiing. He’s 7 years old, and he’s really getting into it.
I’m glad they showed some video of the race I won in Beaver Creek this month. It’s good to be able to show the general public more of the World Cup. Even if it’s just a 20-second clip, it’s better than nothing. But it was a great interview, and I was really excited to do the show. It was a lot of travel — I traveled back from Europe just to do it — but it was well worth it.
It was a pretty intense schedule. I raced in Flachau, Austria, last Tuesday night. The next morning, I worked out in Salzburg, drove to the airport, flew out and arrived in New York early Wednesday evening. I got up super early Thursday morning and went over to Ralph Lauren. They are the people who dressed me with that little red dress. It was the first dress I tried on. I wanted something that was in the Christmas spirit, and the red velvet was perfect.
Then I had some meetings, went to the show, had hair and makeup done and shot the show. As soon as it was done, I went to the airport and flew back to Europe.
It was the same exact crew from the plane I flew over from Europe the day before. They were like, “What are you doing on the plane? That was like the shortest trip ever.” They were like, “Now we have a second chance to get more autographs.”
On the flight to New York, I tried to stay up, so I watched a couple of boring movies. On the way back, I made the chair flat when we were barely off the ground, and I slept the entire way.
Now we race giant slalom and slalom Wednesday and Thursday in Lienz, Austria. Just before my trip to New York, I finished eighth in a slalom in Flachau. That was some of the best slalom skiing I’ve done in a long time. Now I know I can be right there in slalom.
Online.Vonn writes about her improvement in technical events, and how she now expects to earn points in giant slalom and slalom, in the complete diary entry.
Vonn, a three-time World Cup overall winner, reports regularly from the tour in collaboration with Denver Post ski writer John Meyer.
