BEAVER CREEK — As Lindsey Vonn pumped her fists at the finish line and the Vail Valley roared approval, the mountain shook with the truth: No stinkin’ injury, no matter how grisly, can beat the greatest American skier in history.
The Queen Bee of the mountain is back. Vonn is again bigger and badder than gravity. She’s also better than you. Is her two-year comeback finally complete?
“I definitely think I can ski better,” Vonn said Tuesday, after she earned a bronze medal in the super-G at the world championships, finishing half a hiccup behind winner Anna Fenninger of Austria. “But coming back from two knee surgeries, it has gone a lot better than I could have expected.”
Although Fenninger won the gold fair and square, it was evident Vonn thought she was the fastest skier in the race.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” said Vonn, who obviously believed a gusty headwind at the start of her run was what caused the final, minuscule 0.15-second gap between her and Fenninger, whose winning time was 1 minute, 10.29 seconds. “Sometimes luck is on your side, and I don’t think it was quite on the side of the huntress.”
The scoreboard, however, did not and could not reveal the whole truth of why the comeback of Vonn is complete. At age 30, she appears far from done winning medals, rewriting World Cup history and dominating at the Olympics.
WATCH:
Healing the body from a major injury is a crooked, painful road, but it’s actually the easier portion of the journey for any elite athlete. Far harder for any elite athlete to recapture are the fearless mind-set, a winning edge and that killer instinct. And here’s a case study that was on full display at Beaver Creek Resort: Remember when Tiger Woods was known as the most dominant golfer on the planet rather than as Vonn’s boyfriend?
Woods made a wreck of his marriage, his body and his game. Watch Woods now, shooting 82 and looking like a hopeless duffer with a pitching wedge in his hands. All the king’s horses and all Hank Haney’s men couldn’t put Tiger back together again. His swing is a mess. But the real problem is in Woods’ head.
Woods was just another face in the capacity crowd when Vonn returned home to ski, showing family and friends how far she had climbed from the despair of being airlifted off a mountain in Austria at the 2013 world championships with torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in her right knee.
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The grueling recovery forced Vonn to skip the Winter Olympics in Russia a year ago. It did not, however, stop Vonn from demonstrating that she again can be the ringmaster of the white circus. She has returned with a vengeance this season, as evidenced by her record-breaking 63rd World Cup victory last month in Italy.
“For me,” Fenninger said, “it was sure when Lindsey came back, she will win again. Because she’s a winner girl.”
In her mind, Vonn did not finish third in this super-G against the best female skiers in the world. In her mind, Vonn was the fastest skier on the hill. In her mind, it was only bad luck, and ill-timed gusts of wind, that prevented her from taking home gold.
Was that arrogance speaking? No doubt. But why apologize? Vonn refuses to believe she actually lost, in much the same manner Hall of Fame goalie Patrick Roy refused to believe any goal scored against the Avalanche was actually his fault.
This unabashed confidence is precisely what reminds us that Vonn is a long way from tossing her racing boots in the back of a closet to be a ski ambassador paid to smile and take photographs with tourists.
The legs of Vonn were again strong on her skis during the super-G, when she flew over the 27-degree Banshee Bank like … well, a banshee. But it’s the renewed swagger of Vonn that’s scary good. When she spoke about her designs on finishing atop the podium in the downhill later this week, I swear I could hear a 1974 song by Elton John accompanying the brashness in Vonn’s voice.
The Queen Bee of the mountain is back. It’s unmistakable in the way that she moves and the things that she can do. Vonn is back.
And, by the way, did we mention?
She’s better than you.
Mark Kiszla: mkiszla@denverpost.com or
