She doesn’t stop! On Sunday, Vail’s Lindsey Vonn captured the Super-G at Lake Louise to achieve her second career hat-trick in this weekend's World Cup races at Lake Louise, Canada, celebrating her fourth season victory – her 45th in total since December 2004!
The American also won both downhills at the mountain resort west of Calgary. The only other woman to sweep all three World Cup races at Lake Louise was Germany's Katja Seizinger in 1997. Two years ago, Vonn accomplished the same kind of performance in Austria’s Haus im Ennstal. Since her first triumph here seven years ago, the downhill Olympic champion has won eleven races here – one more that Austria’s ‘Speed Queen’ Renate Goetschl at Cortina d’Ampezzo in past winters.
It was her first competition since she announced she was going through a divorce with her husband of four years, Thomas Vonn, who didn’t attend the races here.
"It's definitely a lot more than I expected considering everything that's going on," the jubilant Vonn told the press. "I didn't come into this race expecting this. Now I'm leaving here with a lot of confidence going into my home race, feeling good and ready to compete. It really couldn't have gone any better,” she added with a huge smile. “Winning four out of five races I entered so far this season is pretty amazing.”
If Vonn was affected by emotional turmoil, it did not show in her racing here. The 27-year-old from Burnsville, Minnesota, won both downhill races by nearly two seconds, an eternity in downhill racing. Only a few racers like Austria’s skiing legend Annemarie Moser-Proell did better in the 1970s, winning sometimes by nearly three seconds.
Vonn was nervous.
Vonn admitted feeling nervous prior to Sunday's race. She said that listening to music by Lil Wayne and Drake helped her prepare. "Whenever there are records on the line, it's tough to really stay focused on skiing and that's just what I tried to do," she also explained. "I tried to calm the nerves, stay cool and listen to a little rap music before. I just concentrated on my skiing. That's what it takes to get the job done. This Super-G run was pretty tough and I had to fight hard – three training runs and three races in a row is a lot for us.”
Vonn, who lives in Vail, Colorado, is elate to fly back home to prepare for Wednesday's Super-G planned on the treacherous ‘Birds of Prey’ run used by the men at Beaver Creek. "I really would love to win at home, so I'm going to look at the video and make sure in Beaver Creek that I clean some turns up and make sure I'm skiing a little more aggressive than I skied today," the triple Overall World cup champion commented. “It’s just awesome to compete on this great course, it’s good for women skiing too. I was a course worker on that slope back in 1999 – it’s really impressive. To compete there is a dream-come-through experience for me,” added the world cup leader who plans to compete until the 2015 FIS World Championships at Vail/Beaver Creek.
With her total of 45 wins overall, Lindsey Vonn sits for the moment in fourth place in the list of the All-Time list of best World Cup skiers, just one behind Renate Goetschl, who won 24 downhills in her career.
The leader in both rankings is Moser-Proell, who had 62 career wins including 36 in downhill – 13 more than Lindsey for the moment. The Austrian clinched a total of six Overall titles!
"This is far beyond what I expected to do in my career and I feel extremely lucky to do what I love to do every day," Vonn said about that statistics. "I'm going to try and ski my best and try to win more races and we'll see where that takes me. I would be very proud to leave the scene as one of the All-Time-Leaders. I have also worked very hard for this for so many years. But my main motivation remains to do my best in each single race and achieve my potential whenever possible. There are so many parameters which interfere prior and during a race – it’s impossible to control all of them and you also need luck to get at the top.”
Back in the Overall World Cup lead.
Vonn leads now the Overall World Cup standings with 422 points. Germany's Viktoria Rebensburg is well back in second with 286. Last year’s winner, Maria Hoefl-Riech is 5th for the moment with 181 points. Last year, the Bavarian could score a total of 280 points here with her two wins in downhill and her 2nd place in Super-G. Last season, Lindsey lost the Overall World Cup title by just three points, yet she claimed the crystal globes in downhill, Super-G and combined. Vonn needed some time to overcome this disappointment – especially because two of the last four races of the Finals at Lenzerheide, in Switzerland, had to be cancelled due to poor weather.
"Whenever you experience disappointment or you feel you could have done better, it always motivates you to try harder," Vonn also explained at Lake Louise. "I just really wanted to start this year off well. Last year, I didn't really find my rhythm until later in the season and I just missed out on opportunities. I didn't want to have that feeling today."
Vonn says she spent part of her summer training with men, including two-time World Cup champion Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway. "I just look at what the men are doing and try to really improve and go in that direction. I want to ski more like the men do and take that tighter line and really have that strength and be dynamic like they are. It's really tough to do, but I've trained a lot with them this summer. That's helped me realize how much faster you can go. When you see people go faster, you try to catch up to them and that's helped me push my skiing to another level."
There are other goals that Lindsey Vonn may reach this season if she remains on that amazing level.
Three years ago, she amassed a total of 1788 points to conquer her second Overall title and two years ago she won 11 events.
With more races than ever (45) planned this season in a dozen of countries around the world including Russia and Bulgaria, Vonn could beat the record of 1970 points scored by Croatia’s ‘wondergirl’ Janica Kostelic in 2006 and challenge the mark of 14 season victories set by Switzerland’s Vreni Schneider in 1989. Schneider has won 55 World Cup events during her fantastic career.
Yet as she said – Vonn next goal is for the moment to excel once more in front of her friends and fans at Beaver Creek.
PkL
