CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — American Lindsey Vonn was preparing to fly back to her home country on Sunday after her in the Olympic downhill, the U.S. Ski Team’s chief told The Associated Press.

Sophie Goldschmidt, president and CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, said the team’s medical staff has been coordinating Vonn’s recovery since the crash and subsequent at the and would try to accompany her home. Vonn has had multiple surgeries in Italy to repair a complex tibia fracture in her left leg.

“We’re working through all of that at the moment,” Goldschmidt said. “We’ve got a great team around helping her and she’ll go back to the U.S. for further surgeries.”

Spectators tuning in to see Vonn attempt to win a medal at age 41 with in her left knee and a in her right knee were stunned when she , resulting in a spinning, airborne crash that sent her careening down the Dolomite mountain.

“The impact, the silence, everyone was just in shock. And you could tell it was a really nasty injury,” said Goldschmidt, who was there. “There’s a lot of danger in doing all sorts of Alpine sports but it gives more of an appreciation for how superhuman these athletes are.

“I mean, putting your body on the line, going at those speeds, the physicality. Sometimes actually on the broadcast it����ap really hard to get that across,” Goldschmidt added. “Danger sometimes brings fans in and is pretty captivating. We obviously hope we won’t have injuries like that but it is unfortunately part and parcel of our sports.”

Vonn herself said she has no regrets.

“When I think back on my crash, I didn’t stand in the starting gate unaware of the potential consequences,” late Saturday. “I knew what I was doing. I chose to take a risk. Every skier in that starting gate took the same risk. Because even if you are the strongest person in the world, the mountain always holds the cards.

“But just because I was ready, that didn’t guarantee me anything. Nothing in life is guaranteed. That����ap the gamble of chasing your dreams, you might fall but if you don’t try you’ll never know,” Vonn added.

Goldschmidt visited Vonn at the hospital twice and said, “She’s not in pain. She’s in a stable condition.

“She took an aggressive line and was all in and it was inches off what could have ended up a very different way,” Goldschmidt said. “But what she’s done for our sports and the sport in general, her being a role model, has gone to a whole new level. You learn often more about people during these tough moments than when they’re winning.”

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AP Winter Olympics:

“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”

Kildow and the rest of Vonn’s family — a brother and two sisters — have been with Vonn while she is being treated at a hospital in Treviso following her fall and helicopter evacuation from the course in Cortina on Sunday.

that she had sustained a “complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly.”

Kildow declined to comment on the injuries, but he did address how Vonn was doing emotionally.

“She’s a very strong individual,” Kildow said. “She knows physical pain and she understands the circumstances that she finds herself in. And she’s able to handle it. Better than I expected. She’s a very, very strong person. And so I think she’s handling it real well.”

Kildow — a former ski racer himself who taught his daughter to race — said he slept in his daughter’s hospital room overnight.

“She has somebody with her — or multiple people with her — at all times,” Kildow said. “We’ll have people here as long as she’s here.”

Kildow and the rest of Vonn’s family watched the crash from the finish area with all of the other spectators.

“First, the shock and the horror of the whole thing, seeing a crash like that,” Kildow said of what he felt watching the scene unfold. “It can be dramatic and traumatic. You’re just horrified at what those kinds of impacts have.

“You can go into a shock an emotional psychological shock,” he added. “Because it����ap difficult to just accept what����ap happened. But she’s well cared for. … And the USOC and the U.S. Ski team have a very, very top-notch doctor with her and she is being very well cared for here in Italy.”

Vonn raced the downhill despite tearing the ACL in her left knee nine days earlier in another crash.

“What happened to her had nothing to do with the ACL issue on her left leg. Nothing,” Kildow said. “She had demonstrated that she was able to function at a very high level with the two downhill training runs. … And she had been cleared by high level physicians to ski.”

Kildow said the crash was less a result of Vonn’s knee injury than to the point where she clipped a gate early in her run and got knocked out of control.

“There are times sometimes in any race, but especially in downhill, where you have to take a little speed off,” he said. “You can give yourself a little bit more leeway on the line so you don’t put yourself in a questionable position.”

Vonn, who holds the record of 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, returned to the circuit last season after nearly six years of retirement and after a partial titanium replacement surgery in her right knee. She won two downhills and finished on the podium in seven of the eight World Cup races that she finished this season — and came fourth in the other one.

“She won 84 World Cup races. And not many people do that,” Kildow said, referring to Vonn’s victory total, which place her second on the all-time women’s list behind teammate record 108 wins.

“And there’s a hell of a lot of the difference between a speed race, a downhill especially, and a slalom,” Kildow added.

Vonn will not return to the Olympics to cheer on teammates or for anything else, Kildow said.

“No, she’s not that in kind of situation,” he said. “She will be going home at an appropriate point in time.”

She’s won a record 12 World Cup races on the Olympia delle Tofane track — split evenly between six downhills and six super-Gs — and has a total of 20 podium results there, stretching back to her very first year on the entire circuit in 2004.

So how did the 41-year-old American standout lose control just 12.5 seconds into her run and at the on Sunday?

Here’s what happened and why:

Critical early section

The highlight of the downhill course is the Tofana schuss, a narrow chute between two walls of Dolomite rock where the skiers accelerate to 80 mph (130 kph).

But the real key to the Olympia delle Tofane track comes above the schuss, where there’s a key right turn that includes an uphill stretch. That����ap where Vonn went down.

“It����ap incredibly reverse banked,” said Kristian Ghedina, the Cortina native and former racer who grew up in a home just below the finish line. “That����ap where your speed for the rest of the course gets determined and if you don’t take the right trajectory it makes a huge difference because you end up going uphill.”

Bumped into the air and clipped a gate

Vonn was fighting that reverse bank and trending slightly uphill when she got rocked into the air by a bump, causing her to clip the fourth gate with her right side.

That����ap when the real disaster started to unfold.

Vonn tried to twist and regain her balance in mid-air but landed awkwardly with her skis perpendicular to the fall line, ensuring a brutal fall. She tumbled over, got bounced into the air again and landed on her neck area and slid down a ways before coming to a stop in the middle of the course, away from the safety netting but clearly in serious trouble.

Hours later, Vonn underwent surgery for a and was in stable condition.

“It����ap super flat after it so the goal is to be as close to that gate as possible and she really nailed the turn but she was too close to it so she got hooked into it,” Norwegian skier Kajsa Vickhoff Lie said of the gate. “But that����ap how it is with the Olympics, you really want to be on the limit and she was a little bit

While it����ap always bumpy in that section, this year the final bump is “more of a kicker,” Lie noted, which is why Vonn got popped up suddenly into the air.

“I watched the video, and probably like anybody else, saw that she went through that panel, that uphill double, and for sure kicked her in the air and there was a pretty significant fall after that,” head U.S. ski coach Paul Kristofic told The Associated Press.

Organizers defend course preparation in section where Vonn crashed

Women’s race director Peter Gerdol said the section where Vonn lost control was “not really more different than other years.”

“This is the Cortina downhill and this year we’re talking about the Olympics,” he told AP. “It����ap awarding Olympic medals so has to be somehow challenging.

Had attention been paid to controlling the size of that bump?

“Not severely,” Gerdol said. “Because actually today, all the athletes went through quite easily. Lindsey made a mistake and it happens. It can happen in any section of the course. It happened there but it could have been in another.”

Mandatory air bag inflated under Vonn’s racing suit

When she came to a stop, Vonn’s skis were facing in opposite directions, still attached to her bindings. She then moved her left arm toward her body and was laying there alone and virtually immobile until help arrived after some tense moments. She received care for long minutes before she was airlifted away by helicopter.

The mandatory safety air bag inflated under her racing suit during the crash, supplier Dainese confirmed to The AP. The air bag, which is triggered by a complicated algorithm when racers lose control, may have softened her landing.

It was evident that the air bag had opened, because Vonn’s chest appeared puffed out when she was lying on the snow.

Marco Pastore, who works on the safety system for Dainese, said the air bag deflates after about 20 seconds, so that likely happened while Vonn was lying on the snow after her crash. Eventually, Dainese will try to retrieve a sort of “black box” sensor that could reveal data on the fall.

“She was wearing it when they took her away in the helicopter,” Pastore said. “So we haven’t gotten the data yet.”

AP Sports Writer Steve Douglas contributed to this report.

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — American ski racer Breezy Johnson won the Olympic downhill Sunday with a hard-charging run on a day marred by teammate that saw her being taken off the mountain in a helicopter.

Johnson was the sixth racer and found speed with a risk-taking trip along the iconic Olympia delle Tofana course on a sunny day in . She was in the leader’s box when Vonn, the No. 13 racer, cut a corner too close and was spun around before crashing. The race was put on hold for more than 20 minutes.

The 30-year-old Johnson joins Vonn, 41, as the only American women to win the Olympic downhill. Johnson finished in 1 minute, 36.10 seconds to hold off Emma Aicher of Germany by just .04 seconds, securing the first medal for the United States of these Winter Games in the process. Italy’s Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic downhill winner and 2022 silver medalist, finished with the bronze.

Meet the Coloradans headed to the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics

The tears began welling in the eyes of Johnson as racer after racer couldn’t top her time. Johnson wiped them away with her mitten.

“I had a good feeling about today. I sort of still can’t believe it yet,” Johnson said. “I don’t know when it will sink in.”

It����ap been a tumultuous road to the top for Johnson, who sat out the 2022 Beijing Olympics with a knee injury. She was expired in December 2024 for missing three anti-doping exams and violating “whereabouts” rules. She returned to win the world championship last February.

Now, she’s an Olympic downhill gold medalist. Teammate Jacqueline Wiles finished just .27 seconds away from a medal in a tie for fourth place.

“I think that this was the best run Breezy’s ever skied,” teammate Bella Wright said. “I’ve seen her ski ever since I was 8 years old.”

Vonn’s crash put a somber mood over the event. Vonn, who won the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games, was a gold-medal favorite before her crash in Switzerland last week when she suffered a ruptured ACL for her latest major knee injury.

She returned to elite ski racing last season after nearly six years and after receiving a partial in her right knee.

“I hope it����ap not as bad as it looked,” Johnson said. “Sometimes, because you love this course so much, when you crash on it and hurts you like that, it hurts that much worse. My heart just goes out to her.”

Cande Moreno of Andorra had her left knee buckle while landing on a jump. Like Vonn, she was taken off the course by helicopter and the race was again put on hold.

Both downhill golds this weekend were won by the reigning world champions after won the men’s race on Saturday. Both races also featured up-and-coming silver medalists (Aicher, Giovanni Franzoni of Italy) and Italian veterans in bronze position (Goggia, Dominik Paris).

With her bronze medal, Goggia now has an Olympic downhill medal of every color.

“So-so with my performance, but in the overall I got a medal again,” Goggia said. “It����ap a privilege.”

Graham contributed from Bormio, Italy.

is attempting to recover from in time to try and win an Olympic medal next weekend at age 41.

One of the biggest reasons she came back in the first place after nearly six years of retirement — and what����ap motivating her now — is that she wants to return to the town hosting women’s races at the .

Vonn is the queen of Cortina d’Ampezzo, the resort known as “the Queen of the Dolomites.” Her memories there go back nearly a quarter century.

“I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina,” Vonn said before her injury. “If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it����ap not worth it. But for me, there’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back and it����ap pulled me back one last time.”

Vonn recently looked back at her career in Cortina during an interview with The Associated Press:

An unfinished debut nearly a quarter century ago

Vonn’s first race in Cortina was back in January 2002, before some of her current competitors were even born.

Approaching what would be her first Olympics a month later at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, Vonn’s debut in Cortina was a World Cup super-G and she didn’t finish it.

“I was skiing pretty well at the time, but I wasn’t really putting everything together,” she said. “And I remember in Cortina being nervous about making the Olympic team. I don’t think I skied badly. But I didn’t finish, so at that point I definitely hadn’t been able to put all the pieces together.”

Demoted to skiing’s minor leagues

Vonn’s Cortina record doesn’t have an entry for 2003.

Why?

“Oh, I got demoted,” she said. “I was sent back to Europa Cup. They definitely put all their weight behind Julia (Mancuso),” referring to skiing’s “minor leagues” circuit and her former teammate.

“At that point I hadn’t 100% committed to speed. … I had been racing more tech races than I had speed, so I was still kind of not sure where I fit in and I was still super skinny at the time and I was just trying to figure everything out.”

Vonn’s demotion motivated her to hire a physical trainer and get into better shape.

A memorable video session with a trusted coach

Turns out, it didn’t take Vonn very long “to figure everything out.”

When she returned to Cortina in 2004, Vonn recorded the first World Cup podium result of her career.

In the first of two downhills that weekend, Vonn finished fifth in what was her first time racing downhill on the Olympia delle Tofane course.

The next day, she finished third in a race won by then Olympic champion Carole Montillet. Lindsey Kildow, as she was still referred to, placed 0.24 seconds behind and only one hundredth behind second-place finisher Renate Goetschl.

“Cortina was really the turning point for me. It����ap really where I solidified my mental routine, my physical routine,” Vonn said. “That was the first time I really felt confident enough in what I was doing that I belonged on the podium.”

It was a video session with Alex Hoedlmoser — who has coached Vonn since she was 16 and still coaches her with the U.S. team now — after Vonn’s fifth-place finish that made something click with her.

“He’s like, ‘See, that wasn’t that hard, was it?’ And I was like, ‘No, I can do this.’ And he’s like, ‘Yes, you can,’” Vonn said. “I remember it very vividly.

“And then when I did get on the podium, it was such a great feeling, and I remember calling my dad, and my grandparents, and my mom, and crying, and it was a really special moment, and really a turning point for me in my career, where I really believed that I could be amongst the best in the world.”

A comfort zone she shares only with Lake Louise

Vonn didn’t win her first race in Cortina until 2008. But ever since that 2004 podium, she has felt comfortable there.

“It����ap kind of like Lake Louise where I don’t have to think too much about it,” Vonn said, referring to the Canadian resort where she won 18 races. “I know where to go, I know what it takes, and it����ap a very special place for me and no matter how many wins or losses I’ve had there, that won’t change.”

A family reunion for a record-breaking weekend

While , what Vonn likes to remember about when she broke Annemarie Moser-Pröll’s 35-year-old World Cup wins record in 2015 with victory No. 63, in Cortina, is that she was surrounded by her family.

“I have a big family and they really haven’t come to hardly any World Cups in my career, unfortunately,” Vonn said. “That was a really special weekend. My dad and his wife and my mom and her husband, my sister Laura, were there. It was really special. I don’t have many pictures or memories of my family being at World Cup races. We have the Olympics but even then it����ap not my whole family. So I really cherished that weekend.”

Vonn’s younger sister, Laura, lived in Florence then and the siblings met up annually in Cortina. Vonn’s mother, Lindy, died in 2022 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“It����ap nice,” Vonn said of the 2015 race, “to be able to look back and remind myself of those memories.”

Tears, pain and retirement in 2019. And now back again

It hasn’t been just joy for Vonn in Cortina.

There were also tears when , realizing that she would soon have to retire due to the pain in her knees and joints.

After getting a partial joint replacement in her right knee, Vonn returned to racing last season and now she’s heading back to Cortina aiming to add some new entries to her career record there — if her left knee allows it.

Colorado has the most representatives on the for the 2026 Milan Cortina Games that begin next week. Of the 232 athletes on Team USA, the largest American Winter Olympics team ever, 32 are from Colorado.

Colorado athletes comprise 13.8% of the total Team USA roster. The other states most heavily represented are Minnesota (26 athletes), California (21), Utah (17), Michigan (15), Massachusetts (15), New York (14) and Wisconsin (11). In total, Team USA draws from 32 states.

Notable local headliners for the Milano Cortina Games include record-setting Alpine skiers Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn, Carolina Hurricanes defenseman and Colorado College alum Jaccob Slavin, snowboarder Red Gerard, the figure skating pair of Danny O’Shea and Ellie Kam, and freestyle skiing siblings Birk Irving and Svea Irving.

Colorado is most well represented in skiing, with 18 skiers total: eight freestyle skiers, four Alpine skiers, two ski jumpers, two Nordic skiers, one Nordic combined skier and one ski mountaineer.

In addition to the 32 Coloradans on Team USA, the Avalanche also have in the Olympics: Brock Nelson for the U.S., Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Devon Toews for Canada, Artturi Lehkonen and Joel Kiviranta for Finland, Martin Necas for Czechia and Gabriel Landeskog (who has been injured) for Sweden.

Here is the list of the Coloradans headed to the Olympics, according to Team USA’s official roster. This list includes a Paralympian, sled hockey player Malik Jones, though the U.S. Paralympic roster won’t be set It also includes some athletes who are not native to Colorado but currently live here, and also does not include some Olympians who reside here but do not identify Colorado as their home state.

Coloradans in the 2026 Winter Olympics

Annika Belshaw, Steamboat Springs — Ski jumping

Chase Blackwell, Longmont — Snowboarding

Jake Canter, Silverthorne — Snowboarding

Jason Colby, Steamboat Springs — Ski jumping

Lily Dhawornvej, Copper Mountain — Snowboarding

Alex Ferreira, Aspen — Freestyle skiing

Stacy Gaskill, Golden — Snowboarding

Red Gerard, Silverthorne — Snowboarding

Birk Irving, Winter Park — Freestyle skiing

Svea Irving, Winter Park — Freestyle skiing

Riley Jacobs, Oak Creek — Freestyle skiing

Tess Johnson, Vail — Freestyle skiing

Malik Jones, Aurora — Sled hockey

Lauren Jortberg, Boulder — Nordic skiing

Ellie Kam, Colorado Springs — Figure skating

Elizabeth Lemley, Vail — Freestyle skiing

Niklas Malacinski, Steamboat Springs — Nordic combined skiing

Oliver Martin, Vail — Snowboarding

Charlie Mickel, Durango — Freestyle skiing

Kyle Negomir, Littleton — Alpine skiing

Danny O’Shea, Colorado Springs — Figure skating

Jake Pates, Eagle — Snowboarding

Hunter Powell, Fort Collins — Bobsled

River Radamus, Edwards — Alpine skiing

Madeline Schaffrick, Steamboat Springs — Snowboarding

Mikaela Shiffrin, Edwards — Alpine skiing

Jaccob Slavin, Erie — Hockey

Cam Smith, Crested Butte — Ski mountaineering

Hailey Swirbul, El Jebel — Nordic skiing

Lindsey Vonn, Vail — Alpine skiing

Landon Wendler, Steamboat Springs — Freestyle skiing

Cody Winters, Steamboat Springs — Snowboarding

They said she had “gone completely mad” and hadn’t “recognized the meaning and purpose of her other life” away from skiing.

Well, on her doesn’t seem so crazy now.

Not after she dominated the opening speed weekend of the Olympic season, and gained more points than any other skier over three days of World Cup racing.

At age 41.

“All the people that didn’t believe in me, I have to thank them because it really gives me a lot of motivation,” Vonn said.

“I’m surprised that people haven’t figured that out by now. That every time you talk bad about me it just makes me stronger and better and more motivated. So I would love for people to keep coming at me. It would be great. Motivate me even more.”

A year ago, when Vonn was preparing to race again after nearly six years of retirement, two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister suggested the American “should see a psychologist,” adding on Austrian TV, “Does she want to kill herself?”

Austrian downhill great Franz Klammer said “she’s gone completely mad” and four-time overall World Cup champion Pirmin Zurbriggen added that Vonn “hasn’t recognized the meaning and purpose of her other life in recent years.”

After all, the risks are high in a sport where skiers hurl themselves down icy mountains at speeds of 130 kph (80 mph) with little protection besides a helmet, a back protector and under their suits.

But Vonn looked more composed and stable than skiers half her age on the Corviglia course in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

LeBron James shares solidarity with Vonn

When Vonn won Friday’s downhill by 0.98 seconds — an eternity in a sport often decided by mere hundredths — she was emboldened enough to shape her hands in a sleeping gesture in the style of NBA star .

In other words, she felt she had just put the rest of the field to rest when she became the oldest winner in World Cup history — among men and women.

The performance and gesture got some attention in the NBA.

“40+ is the new 20. Well, until you wake up the next day!” 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star said on Instagram.

Goggia’s pacifier

Fellow downhiller Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic champion, said on Friday that Vonn “took us all to school and left us with a pacifier (baby’s dummy) in our mouths.”

The next day, Goggia backed up her comments and put a pacifier in her mouth while standing next to Vonn.

on Saturday despite a big mistake midway down, then on Sunday. In all, she earned a weekend-best 230 World Cup points — 60 more than Goggia and 85 more than Emma Aicher, the 22-year-old German who won Saturday’s race.

She “raised the bar for every athlete in downhill and super-G,” Goggia said.

Pushing back retirement

Vonn’s performance has her reconsidering her plans.

Instead of going back into retirement immediately after the Milan Cortina Winter Games in February, she’ll likely ski on through the end of the World Cup season in March.

“I think I might need to change my approach,” she said.

Vonn’s head coach Chris Knight said: “We can start planning for the whole season.”

Having figured out her equipment and with improved fitness from last season — — Knight believes Vonn can perform at this level every weekend.

“It����ap just about managing the load, the training and the recovery time,” Knight told The Associated Press. “It����ap almost recovery is more important right now because she’s in a really good place with the skiing.”

Dream team with Shiffrin

Women’s Alpine skiing at the Olympics will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where Vonn holds the record with 12 World Cup wins.

Besides downhill and super-G on her Olympic program, Vonn also plans to enter the new team combined — which features two-person teams with one competitor racing a downhill run and another performing a slalom run.

at last year’s world championships but her performances then didn’t merit that chance. .

But the way this season has started for Vonn — and with — could result in a skiing “Dream Team” in Cortina.

“If they do it like they did last year at the world champs, you take the fastest downhiller and the fastest slalom skier and move down from there,” Knight said.

Svindal’s calming influence

Vonn also has former Olympic downhill champion Aksel Lund Svindal on her coaching staff this season — and it was the Norwegian offering the final words of advice before she raced over the weekend.

“He’s been at the start a million times and his calm energy is really helpful to me because sometimes I’m really intense,” Vonn said. “He’s just always so stable and that gives me peace of mind.”

Andrew Dampf is at

AP Olympics:

The queen of downhill skiing is well and truly back.

At age 41, is still faster than the rest and on Friday became the oldest winner of a World Cup race since the circuit started in 1967.

Vonn raced to a stunningly fast win in a downhill at St. Moritz on Friday to earn her first victory in nearly eight years — and the first in her comeback with after a five-year retirement.

The United States ski great seized the lead by an astonishing 1.16 seconds ahead of Mirjam Puchner of Austria. Even wilder was that Vonn trailed by 0.61 after the first two time checks at the Swiss resort.

Vonn’s lead was later cut to 0.98 — still a massive margin in downhill — when unheralded Magdalena Egger took second place from teammate Puchner.

“It was an amazing day, I couldn’t be happier, pretty emotional,” Vonn told Swiss broadcaster RTS. “I felt good this summer but I wasn’t sure how fast I was. I guess I know now how fast I am.”

Soon after, Vonn shed tears on the podium in the finish area when The Star-Spangled Banner played.

It was a perfect start to her Olympic season to get a first victory since a downhill in March 2018 at Are, Sweden.

Vonn’s superb debut working with new coach Aksel Lund Svindal, a men’s downhill great who won the , suggests their stellar partnership is paying off.

Her run Friday looked routine when she dropped tenths of seconds to Puchner’s time on the top half of the sunbathed Corviglia course, where the finish is at altitude above 2,000 meters (6,500 feet).

Vonn then was faster than anyone through the next speed checks, touching 119 kph (74 mph), and posted the fastest time splits for the bottom half.

She skied through the finish area and bumped against the inflated safety barrier, lay down in the snow and raised her arms on seeing her time.

Night, night

Vonn got up, punched the air with her right fist and shrieked with joy before putting her hands to her left cheek in the style of .

The 2010 Olympic champion is targeting another gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Games in February. Women’s Alpine skiing is at the storied Cortina d’Ampezzo course in the Dolomites, which Vonn has mastered in her career with 12 World Cup race wins.

“Obviously my goal is Cortina but if this is the way we start I think I’m in a good spot,” said Vonn, who will be favored for another downhill win Saturday at St. Moritz.

Age records

Vonn has shredded age records since her return to World Cup racing at St. Moritz one year ago.

She’s now the oldest winner of a men’s or women’s race, taking the mark set by 37-year-old Didier Cuche, also in Switzerland, in 2012 when he triumphed in a super-G at Crans-Montana. Until Friday, the women’s record was 34 years, 7 months set by Federica Brignone in March after victory in a super-G at Kvitfjell, Norway.

No woman aged at least 35 ever was on a World Cup race podium until March when at Sun Valley.

No women aged at least 36 ever had a points-scoring result in downhill until Vonn last season. No women aged at least 37 ever had a points-scoring result in any World Cup event until Vonn, according to the archive.

Vonn, who turns 42 in October, has pledged to retire at the end of the season in March, so might not catch the men’s age record for a podium finish — Johan Clarey was 42 years, 13 days when runner-up in the feared Kitzbühel downhill in January 2023. At 41, at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

44 wins across 24 years

Friday’s race was Vonn’s 125th start in World Cup downhill in her storied career, 24 years after the first at Lake Louise, Canada.

She has now won a record-extending 44 of them, including at St. Moritz in 2012, and has 83 race victories across all World Cup disciplines.

Her previous win at Are came weeks after Vonn took bronze in downhill at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea won by Sofia Goggia, who placed fourth Friday. That Olympics was Vonn’s fourth and the last she attended.

She also won gold in downhill at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and at the 2009 world championships at Val d’Isere, France.

Such is Vonn’s dominance in downhill, she has more World Cup wins in the fastest discipline than the other 60 racers combined who started Friday, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation said.

Injured rivals

A series of serious injuries this year robbed Friday’s race of World Cup overall winners and Lara Gut-Behrami, Olympic champion and emerging U.S. prospect .

Two-time Olympic gold medalist had surgery on her back Thursday, after crashing hard in a training run at the fastest part of the St. Moritz course.

“I feel so sorry for Michelle, but that����ap ski racing,” said Vonn, who suggested she is skiing even better in super-G, which is raced Sunday at the Swiss resort.

___

More AP Winter Olympics at

The American ski great with medals in multiple disciplines said Tuesday she’s not worried about tarnishing her legacy after several years after she last competed.

“I don’t think anyone remembers Michael Jordan’s comeback,” Vonn said at the Team USA Olympic Media Summit ahead of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games. “I don’t think that tarnished his legacy at all. … I’ve already succeeded. I’ve already won.”

in the spring of 2024 paved the way for her return to racing with Vonn setting her sights on skiing in one of her favorite places in Cortina, where she got on the podium at a World Cup event for the first time and broke the Women’s World Cup wins record. She called it the perfect way to end her career.

“I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina,” Vonn said. “If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it����ap not worth it. But, for me, there’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back and it����ap pulled me back one last time.”

Vonn is set to train at Copper Mountain in Colorado in November and race again in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December. Assuming she qualifies, she plans to compete in the downhill, super-G and team combined races.

“That����ap dependent on results, but that is my intent,” Vonn said. “There’s not a world in which I would be happy with not qualifying for the Olympics. But I don’t think that����ap in the cards.”

Vonn is aiming to be back at the Olympics, where she won downhill gold and super-G bronze at the 2010 Vancouver Games and downhill bronze at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games — what she thought was her final Olympics. She’s not shy in acknowledging how old she is compared to U.S. teammates and rivals and how her training has changed but insisted she is not satisfied with just participating.

Eating better and feeling no pain in her right knee helped Vonn train better and smarter than in her younger days.

“I think I’m in potentially the best shape of my life, which is saying something at my age,” Vonn said. “Because of my knee replacement, I literally can do anything I want to do. I’m not restricted.”

Mentally, Vonn is in a different place than she was when she made her Olympic debut at 17 at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Sure, the nerves are still there, but she’s driven now by adrenaline and not worried about the weight of expectations.

“I’m the harshest critic of anyone,” Vonn said. “No matter what expectation the world has on me, I definitely have higher expectations.”

When Vonn speaks with her father, he has a different perspective on the challenge in front of her.

“My dad says it����ap the most pressure I’ve ever had in my whole life,” Vonn said. “I don’t t feel like I have a lot of pressure.”

Vonn found her vintage form while flying down the twisting and steep Challenger course at the World Cup finals. The American pumped her ski poles after glancing at the scoreboard as the large crowd roared.

This was Vonn’s first World Cup podium spot since March 15, 2018, when she finished third in a super-G in Are, Sweden. Vonn came out of retirement this season after a partial knee replacement.

It was Vonn’s 138th career World Cup podium in her 408th World Cup start. She is within one of tying the most starts by a female racer, a mark held by Renate Goetschl of Austria.

Gut-Behrami finished in a time of 1 minute, 12.35 seconds — edging Vonn by 1.29 seconds — to earn the season-long super-G crystal globe by overtaking Italian racer Federica Brignone. Gut-Behrami trailed by five points heading into Sunday’s race. Gut-Behrami found plenty of speed and took some calculated risks to glide through the course. Brignone finished third, 1.33 seconds behind the time of Gut-Behrami.

The final season-long super-G standings ended up Gut-Behrami, Brignone and Sofia Goggia of Italy.

On Saturday, after the race was canceled, along with the the overall title.