Lindsey Vonn crossed the end layout then a powerful run, waved to the family, and later radioed guidelines again to her six U.S. teammates nonetheless to ski.
Then virtually six years clear of the game’s height stage, the 40-year-old American alpine snowboarding big name used to be again in a usual scene Saturday, turning back Global Cup racing with a 14th-place end in a Tremendous-G race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Vonn completed in 1.16.36, 1.18 seconds off the top of winner Cornelia Huetter of Austria, the 2024 Global Cup downhill champion. Switzerland’s Lara Intestine-Behrami and Italy’s Sofia Goggia rounded out the rostrum. Fifty-seven skiers began the race, with 46 completing.
Racing the monitor the place she’s gained 3 times in Tremendous-G, Vonn were given off to a sluggish get started, posting one of the vital slowest splits within the first sector of the path. However she used to be a lot more potent from there, posting top-five instances in two of the overall 3 sectors.
Lauren Macuga used to be the one American quicker than Vonn, tying for 7th in 1:15.93.
Vonn gained 3 Olympic medals and 4 general Global Cup titles sooner than a rash of knee accidents pressured her to surrender from the game then the Global Championships in February 2019. In her ultimate race there, she took 3rd within the downhill.
A knee alternative surgical treatment previous this 12 months left her pain-free and considering a comeback to the game. Utmost time, she instructed the Unutilized York Instances she used to be making plans her go back, and simply two weeks nearest, she used to be again in pageant, snowboarding two downhill and two Tremendous-G races on the FIS Fall Competition — a degree underneath the Global Cup circuit — at Copper Mountain in Colorado.
Her finishes in the ones races — which ranged from nineteenth to twenty seventh — have been excellent plenty to earn her the issues had to follow for access to Global Cup races as a wild card. The World Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) — the game’s governing frame — lets in for entries for retired skiers who’ve earned a minimal choice of issues life additionally reaching positive benchmarks within the future, akin to successful Olympic or Global Championship gold medals.
Utmost age, Vonn served as a forerunner, checking out the monitor for statuses and protection, forward of the ladies’s downhill and Tremendous-G races on the famed Birds of Prey Global Cup path in Beaver Creek, Colo.
If she’s ready to go back to Global Cup-winning method, it could be unheard of in girls’s alpine snowboarding. Previous this 12 months, Italy’s Federica Brignone turned into the oldest girl to ever win a Global Cup race at 34. At the males’s aspect, regardless that, France’s Johan Clarey medaled on the 2022 Olympics in Beijing at 41 and made a Global Cup podium at 42.
When Vonn retired, she used to be probably the most a hit American Global Cup skier of all future, with 82 person match wins, 2nd most effective to Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. Fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin — who’s improving from accidents sustained in a fall — has since handed each girls and sits one win clear of 100.
A four-time Olympian, Vonn’s 3 medals come with downhill gold in Vancouver in 2010. She gained Global Championships golds in downhill and Tremendous-G in 2009 and used to be the total Global Cup champion 3 immediately years from 2008 to 2010 and once more in 2012.
However accidents stalled her occupation, price her the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and in the end ended in her move from snowboarding. Her endmost Global Cup race sooner than Saturday used to be in January 2019 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
That’s additionally the host venue for the 2026 Olympics. Vonn has no longer discounted the potential for competing on the Olimpia delle Tofane path — the place she’s gained 12 instances — within the 2026 Video games, and Saturday’s end result makes that purpose glance inside of achieve.
(Photograph of Lindsey Vonn all through Saturday’s run: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
