Vail’s Lindsey Vonn is surfing on a very high wave since her return on the World Cup tour earlier this month – the 31-year-old celebrated her third double-win at Cortina d’Ampezzo last weekend dominating the rest of the field in both speed races organized on the prestigious ‘Olimpia-Tofana’ course. So far, the quadruple overall World Cup champion has enjoyed a total of eleven victories in the famous Italian resort where she got her maiden podium-finish back in January 2004.
Her expected 37th triumph in a World Cup downhill allowed her to improve the previous record of Austria’s skiing legend Annemarie Moser-Proell that she tied two weeks ago at Zauchensee, in Austria. On the next day, she got her 75th World Cup win achieving a nearly flawless run in the challenging Super-G competition that allowed her to regain the lead in the overall World Cup standings with an advance of 45 points on Switzerland’s Lara Gut as the tour is moving to Slovenia’s Maribor where the next technical races are scheduled at the end of this month.
So far Lindsey has won eight of the ten races she managed to finish in the first part of the season! With nearly twenty races left on the calendar including a City Event at Stockholm early March, the “Speed Queen” has a good chance to improve her own record of twelve victories achieved during her amazing 2011/12 season, when she scored nearly 2000 points in the overall standings.
The best mark of 14 wins has been set on the women’s side by Switzerland’s Vreni Schneider during her excellent 1988/89 season while skiing legends Ingemar Stenmark and Hermann Maier peaked at 13 wins during their best winters.
Of course, Lindsey has been mostly questioned about her chance to beat one day the mark set by Stenmark in the 1970s and 1980s – when the Swede won a total of 86 races during his fantastic career.
In fact, it has become a tough situation to deal with now for the American star. “I think there was a lot of pressure,” she said at Cortina d’Ampezzo after the downhill. “The more people talk about the record, the harder it is to break them. I try to stay focused on my skiing. I’m just really happy to come away with another win and another record.
“I need to just focus on tomorrow — one day at a time, one race at a time,” she added. “I can’t start calculating the numbers because it gets into my head. It makes it harder than it needs to be. I just need to ski solid and not have any mistakes. Then the results will come and the records will come. You can’t put the cart before the horse.”
Each winter, Lindsey is always looking forward to return to the Italian resort nested in the beautiful Dolomites mountains situated north of Venice.
“I love Cortina,” she commented. “It’s the place I got my first podium. Last year, breaking the overall wins record — that was incredible. My sister is here now and a lot of the tech girls are here, which is really nice. I don’t think I’ve ever had tech girls come to watch me ski a speed race, so that was something special for me. Of course, all my teammates on the speed side are really supportive too. It was just another perfect day in Cortina.”
At the bib draw of the downhill, Lindsey introduced her new puppy Lucy to the other racers before moving to the ceremony. She got the 3-month-old cavalier king spaniel recently at Bologna and is extremely happy about having it with her on the road. “I love Lucy! Landed on her name. Can’t get enough of this little love bug. She seems to be helping me ski fast too:) ” she wrote on her twitter account along her photo with it.
At Cortina Lindsey also explained that Lucy has become a wonderful companion and a great support for her as she sometimes feels lonely when returning to her room. “I feel like sometimes when I have a bad day it’s hard to go home,” she told the press. “It’s nice to have a friendly, smiling little puppy face excited for me to come home whether I win or lose.”
After the Super-G race, Lindsey Vonn had another good reason to be happy and proud of her performance as the run was technically pretty challenging. “This weekend has been incredible. I feel like all the speed weekends have been amazing. I’m just skiing really well, skiing confident. It was interesting to see the course set today. It was a set a little bit more technical, and people thought that maybe I wouldn’t be able to win with that set, but I skied well. I’m a good turner as I showed it at Are.”
“The snow here is absolutely perfect. This place is incredibly special for me. I’ve broken quite a few records here now; I enjoy the time here. I’m always confident and happy here when I’m in the starting gate and I think that shows with my skiing. I wish we had more races here.”
After some giant slalom training somewhere in Italy this week, Lindsey is aiming for another strong performance at Maribor where she also won a competition back in 2013, a week before her dramatic crash in Super-G at Schladming during the FIS Ski World Championships. The Slovenian course suits her style and may allow her to achieve another strong performance in the specialty after a series of disappointing results at Courchevel and Lienz.
