American skier Lindsey Vonn won her record-tying 36th women’s World Cup downhill Saturday in Altenmarkt, Austria.
Advertisement
She leads the World Cup super-G standings by 80 points over Huetter and climbed to within 38 points of overall leader Gut after her double-winning weekend, which she attributes to time off at home in Colorado over Christmas.
And in doing so, Vonn equaled Annemarie Moser-Proell’s record of World Cup downhill victories which has stood for 36 years. The title was her 73rd World Cup win, leaving her only 13 shy of Ingemar Stenmark’s all-time record of 86.
The 31-year-old Vonn, who won the season’s only other super-G in Lake Louise in December, extended her record for any skier to 26 World Cup super-G victories and took her winning streak to four, stretching back to March 2015.
“I definitely didn’t expect such a big advantage going into the second run”, said Vonn.
Vonn leads the discipline standings with 300 points after getting her third victory of the season.
It was the first women’s downhill in 14 years to be contested over two runs. Cornelia Huetter of Austria came 1.25 back in third.
“It’s really fun to see Lindsey destroying the competition and setting records”, said Ankeny, who is six years younger than Vonn and stayed with slalom.
Along with Gut, Viktoria Rebensburg had also threatened to outdo Vonn, but a costly late error left the German nearly two seconds off the pace in 11th.
“It’s awesome”, Vonn said Friday after leading the final training session on the Kaelberloch course, which has been shortened from its usual three kilometers to 1,875 meters, reducing run times to just over a minute.
Lindsey Vonn gives the thumbs up after moving atop the leaderboard during Sunday’s super G.
Assuming she continues to race like she did Saturday, she has a chance to add to an Olympic medal haul that already includes one gold and one bronze from the 2010 Vancouver Games. I knew many girls had problems so I chose to ski a rounder line..
Advertisement
Switzerland’s Lara Gut failed to finish the first run, while Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather skied out of the second. “But today she was.”
The first run was interrupted for 15 minutes when Lotte Smiseth Sejersted crashed and had to be airlifted off the course with suspected knee injuries.
