WHISTLER, Canada—Lindsey Vonn sliced her way down the course to a historic victory at Whistler Mountain on Wednesday, overcoming an injury to her shin that had made her doubt her ability to compete.
Until Vonn’s run, fellow American Julia Mancuso looked set for gold after laying down a time nearly one second faster than her competitors. In downhill skiing, every hundredth of a second matters.
“I’m overwhelmed, this is the best day of my life by far,” said Vonn as she left the course.
She said her injury was very painful and the especially bumpy course that day made it worse.
Until Vonn’s run, fellow American Julia Mancuso looked set for gold after laying down a time nearly one second faster than her competitors. In downhill skiing, every hundredth of a second matters.
“I’m overwhelmed, this is the best day of my life by far,” said Vonn as she left the course.
She said her injury was very painful and the especially bumpy course that day made it worse.
“It’s been a real tough couple of weeks since my injury, pretty much having my Olympic dreams crushed.”
She described the time after her injury as having the walls “come crumbling down.”
“I wasn’t that confident with my shin injury and I just had to fight back and keep doing therapy,” said Vonn, adding that having the practice runs canceled yesterday was a stroke of luck.
“It gave me a lot of extra time to heal my shin.”
“I was hurting pretty badly after that first training run and just to be able to come back today and fight hard and win this gold medal is everything that I have worked my whole life for.”
She said after seeing Mancuso lay down an exceptional time that she knew it would take everything she had to win.
“I did that, I executed. It wasn’t a perfect run, but it was a good run.”
Vonn’s husband, fellow U.S. Olympian and alpine ski racer Thomas Vonn said he was incredibly nervous before his wife’s race.
“It was the most nervous I have ever been in my life. It was ridiculous how nervous I was, I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” he said.
It wasn’t just him, he said. Everyone around Vonn was acting differently before the race, afraid to talk about the upcoming event.
“Lindsey could feel it and when we got private it was like ‘Everyone is so damn nervous, I wish that they would just chill out.’”
With Vonn taking gold and Mancuso silver, it was the first time two Americans have gone 1-2 in any Alpine event since 1984. Austria’s Elisabeth Goergl scored bronze.
Taking the podium, Mancuso did a little dance pumping her feet in the air while Vonn stood straight.
Mancuso said she was confident she would perform well at the Games.
“I’ve always just known that I would get a medal here and I love the Olympics. My big goals have always been in the Olympics.”
