SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM – Big jumps. Lots of terrain. Steep pitches.
The downhill course at the Alpine skiing world championships would have been a challenge for Lindsey Vonn’s aching legs before she retired in 2019.
Now that she’s replaced part of her right knee with titanium? No problem.
“This is probably the worst hill for someone with bad knees, but I felt great,” Vonn said after placing 20th in the opening training session Tuesday. “None of the landings hurt at all.”
Vonn returned to the skiing circuit in December at the age of 40 and she wasn’t initially planning on racing at the worlds. But she’s made so much progress that she’s going to enter the super-G on Thursday, the downhill on Saturday and the team combined event next week.
So what did the American standout make of her training performance?
“I was just taking it easy,” she said. “I thought it was a really fun course, actually. Reminds me of when I was learning how to ski downhill at Vail. We had a lot of terrain that we built like this, so it’s fun.”
Lara Gut-Behrami, Breezy Johnson and Federica Brignone placed 1-2-3 in the training session.
There are two more training sessions before Saturday’s downhill race.
“I really put zero weight into training runs because I’m testing things,” she said. “I have my jacket on. I have all my pads on. I’m trying different boots and in the training runs I’ve never done that before.”
Vonn told The Associated Press in a recent interview that the main goal of her comeback is to compete at next season’s Milan-Cortina Olympics — after which she’ll head back into retirement.
“This season,” Vonn said, “is all about figuring out what it’s going to take to be successful next year.”
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