Lindsey Vonn has once more been out of reach in Lake Louise’s weekend of racing, achieving her second ‘Hat-Trick’ in a row on the Canadian ‘Olympic Course’. After winning the first two downhill races of the season, the skier from Vail also captured the first Super-G of the season. After another aggressive run down the Canadian slope that she knows by heart, the defending Overall World Cup champion enjoyed her 14th victory at her favorite skiing venue, her seventh in succession here, but she confessed afterwards the effort had worn her out.
As the rest of the field, Vonn had to battle difficult weather and course conditions. It has been another day of snow flurries and flat light, making the Super-G course even tougher. “I’m just shattered, I’m running on low battery,” said Lindsey Vonn after her run. She is now in 3rd place in the general classification with 310 points, 87 behind Slovenia’s Tina Maze.
56 wins for Vonn.
With a new total of 56 victories, the four times Overall World Cup champion is now the second most successful female skier in history behind Austrian skiing legend Annemarie Moser-Proell, whose record of 62 wins set from 1970 to 1980 is now in serious jeopardy. Moser-Proell also clinched a total of six Overall titles during her brilliant career as well as several gold medals at World Championships and Olympics.
But the 2010 downhill Olympic champion could already claim to have won more actual races than the legendary Austrian, whose record included seven ‘classical’ combined ‘paper event’, which at the time were mere simple ‘FIS-points’ additions of a downhill and a slalom held separately and not specific events as the actual Super-combined. Vonn captured five of them in past years.
So far, the skier from Vail already has accumulated a total of 100 World Cup podiums – only 15 away from Moser-Proell.
Interestingly enough, Lindsey did not have an ideal preparation for the weekend, suffering previously from a stomach bug which weakened her earlier in November. She explained at Lake Louise that she would have to save energy this season to focus on her main goals.
A hard season for the favorites.
“It’s going to be a hard-fought season because Tina is really motivated and she can score points in every event as Maria,” said the American, who added she considered skipping a number of slaloms this winter, including the so-called ‘City-Events’ held in Munich and Moscow. “I first need to stay very focused throughout the next weeks to find back my best form, I’m so tired now and there are now many tough races coming up in Europe.”
“At least, this weekend was a huge boost for my confidence. I was definitely feeling extremely low after being in the hospital and my poor result in Aspen. But I knew if there was a place to turn it around it was Lake Louise where I feel so comfortable. Now I just tried to get myself every opportunity to rest and recover for the races this weekend. Every athlete has their favorite hill where they feel confident and comfortable. I know this hill like the back of my hand and have confidence knowing I have won here in the past,” she also commented.
After her new show of strength in Canada, the question of whether Vonn should be allowed to race with the men remains. Swiss coach Hans Flatscher jokingly said there was an excellent reason to let her compete in the men’s ranks in the future.
“This way,” he said, “there will be three extra available places on the podium in Lake Louise including the one at the top,” the Swiss coach said.
The World Cup circuit returns to Europe next weekend with a Super-combined, a Super-G and giant slalom scheduled in St Moritz, Switzerland.
