“For Cortina, things are looking pretty awesome,” she said then, tossing in a colorful adverb between “pretty” and “awesome.”
On Saturday, in Vonn’s first race since officially qualifying for the 2026 Games in the downhill, she put a stamp on those comments, winning her second downhill of the season and 84th World Cup race of her storied career. The win solidified her place as not just a contender but a favorite in the fastest Alpine discipline at age 41, less than one month before the Olympic race in Cortina and just over a year into an improbable comeback to the sport’s top circuit.
Vonn won in 1 minute, 6.24 seconds on a snowy day in Zauchensee, Austria, besting Norway’s Kajsa Vickhoff Lie, who was 0.37 seconds back. American Jacqueline Wiles was third, 0.48 behind, for her third career World Cup podium.
There was very little snow when Vonn started, with bib No. 6. She started just over a tenth of a second off the pace in the first two sections, but she got faster as the course turned more technical in its later sections, nearly a half-second better than Lie over the last half.
“I’m not a really good glider,” Vonn said after the race in the winner’s TV interview, “so I figured I wasn’t going to be great at the top. Where I excel are the turns, and I knew with all the new snow, the outside track was going to be slow. So I tried to stay on the inside track, on the more direct line. … I risked enough to win, and I think, that’s what it took today.”
The race was shortened due to heavy snow conditions in the area, which also forced Friday’s second training run to be canceled, perhaps an advantage for a skier like Vonn, who has raced the course plenty of times before.
“The downhill training run was tough,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t fast, I was really slow, I was like almost last, because it was so windy. So I really had no reference point except using my past experience, and I think that’s what really helped a lot was knowing where to go and where to push.”
Vonn won 82 World Cup races, three Olympic medals and eight world championship medals in a decorated career that began in 2002 and appeared to end in 2019, when she retired due to the mounting toll a series of injuries in the always-dangerous sport had taken on her body.
In 2024, though, a knee replacement gave her a second life in skiing. She planned a comeback, then returned to the World Cup circuit in December of that year. A season of uneven results culminated with a second-place finish in a super-G race at the year-end World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, last March, her first World Cup podium in seven years.
After an offseason of training to refine her form, Vonn opened this season with a downhill win in St. Moritz, Switzerland, last month, her first World Cup victory in nearly eight years. In five World Cup races this season across downhill and super-G, she’s been on the podium every time and is the overall leader in the downhill standings.
Saturday, she said she didn’t expect the downhill success so quickly.
“I feel like I was skiing better in super-G this summer,” she said, “but when I got to the races in St. Moritz, everything was working really well right from the start. I’m just trying to keep the confidence going and keep that good skiing going.”
A super-G race is scheduled for Sunday in Zauchensee. Vonn hasn’t officially qualified yet in that discipline, but Sunday ought to clinch it — she’s the top American in super-G by a wide margin, with just two more speed-race weekends before the Games.
In December, after Vonn won that season-opening downhill in St. Moritz, she fell to the snow as she crossed the line, screaming in joy at a crowning moment on her improbable comeback. Saturday, the reaction was more subdued. Vonn pumped her fist to the crowd and kept a determined look on her face.
The Olympics are just weeks away. It’s business time.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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