ST. MORITZ, Switzerland (AP) — How fast can she go on her titanium knee? And how competitive will she be?
Those are the big questions surrounding Lindsey Vonn’s comeback to World Cup ski racing this weekend at age 40 after nearly six years of retirement.
“It’s a question that’s been going through my head a lot over the last week,” said Chris Knight, Vonn’s personal coach. “She’s not far away.”
Vonn is slated to race super-Gs on Saturday and Sunday in St. Moritz.
While Vonn has won a record 28 World Cup super-Gs, including three at the Swiss resort, calculating her current potential is not an exact science.
During two lower-level FIS super-G races in Copper Mountain, Colorado, two weeks ago, she finished 24th and 19th. Although not too much should be read into those results, because Vonn’s main goal was just completing the race with a half-decent time to gain the necessary qualifying points to return to the World Cup — which she accomplished.
A better guide might be last weekend’s World Cup races in Beaver Creek, Colorado, when Vonn was the final forerunner testing the course.
Knight said that Vonn’s forerunning times were 1.2 seconds behind downhill winner Cornelia Huetter and 1.4 behind super-G winner Sofia Goggia — which would have placed her about 12th in both races.
But Vonn said she wasn’t going 100% during her forerunning duties.
“She’s still got a lot left. She can push a lot harder,” Knight told The Associated Press as he arrived in St. Moritz. “Once she gets in the start gate with the bib on, she’s going to go obviously as hard as she can.”
Wind and starting positions are usually big factors in St. Moritz
Under a new wild card rule for former champions, Vonn will start after the top 30 ranked racers complete their runs — with No. 31.
The Engiadina course in St. Moritz is entirely above the tree line, which makes it susceptible to strong and sudden gusts of wind.
“Maybe starting No. 31 won’t be so bad with those long flats at the top, to get some of that fresh snow off the track. Speed it up a little bit,” Knight said.
Sun is forecast for Saturday, with overcast conditions and possibly some snow on Sunday.
By the time Vonn comes down, Goggia, Olympic champion Lara Gut-Behrami and the other top racers will have already raced.
Mikaela Shiffrin, who shares the record of five wins in St. Moritz across all disciplines with Vonn, isn’t racing this weekend as she recovers from abdominal surgery to clean out a puncture wound she sustained in a crash last month.
Vonn left the tour with 82 World Cup wins — the record for a woman at the time and within reach of the then all-time Alpine mark of 86 held by Swedish standout Ingemar Stenmark. The women’s record held by Vonn was eclipsed in January 2023 by Shiffrin, who now has an outright record 99 wins.
‘She’s a better skier right now,” than when she retired, her coach says
Vonn’s last big race was the downhill at the world championships in Are, Sweden, in February 2019 when she won bronze on her damaged legs, which had been worn down by a series of crashes and injuries that forced her to retire.
But she underwent replacement surgery on her right knee in April and is feeling better physically now than she has in years.
“She’s in way, way better balance than she was back then,” Knight said. “This knee is in incredible shape now. She has no swelling, no pain. And for the first three camps — July, September and November, I never saw out of balance once, which is pretty impressive.”
Knight, who also coached Vonn within the U.S. Ski Team during various phases of her earlier career, first heard rumblings about her return a year ago. Then in May as Vonn was healing from the surgery, they drew out a comeback plan with Knight in his new role as a Red Bull coach. She first hit the snow on the glacier in Soelden, Austria, in July. Then they went to New Zealand, back to Soelden and ultimately finished the prep period in Colorado.
“She’s a better skier right now. A better balanced skier than I remember at the end of her last season,” Knight said. “You’ll see it when you start watching.”
The biggest challenge for Vonn has been her new equipment
“The boots are new — it’s a completely different model,” Vonn said. “Those things are the fine details that you need to have dialed in to really be at the top of ski racing. Fundamentally I’m in a great place, and now it’s just fine tuning to be able to be truly competitive.”
Vonn’s longtime ski technician Heinz Haemmerle retired, so her equipment supplier Head assigned her Chris Krause, who formerly worked for Didier Cuche and Bode Miller.
“He’s very, very particular with the equipment,” Knight said. “And Lindsey really likes that.”
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine