Courtesy of Red Bull Newsroom
American eyes downhill gold at World Championships despite super-G failure.
Lindsey Vonn believes that she can bounce back from her super-G woe in St. Moritz to challenge for a downhill gold medal on Sunday.
The 2009 world downhill and super-G gold medallist struggled to find her rhythm on Tuesday morning, eventually skiing off the course.
She was forced to watch on from the sidelines as Austrian Nicole Schmidhofer produced a scintillating run to grab gold with Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather in silver and home favourite Lara Gut taking bronze.
The 32-year-old told Eurosport, “I lost my pole pretty early on and I just kept trying to get it back. I was distracted there for a second and I lost a lot of time, so I tried to push the line more and I went too straight off of this roll and had no chance of making the next gate.
“It was a tactical error on my part but I was charging, trying to risk everything and that’s what you have to do in a world championships. I’m not disappointed. I tried as best as I could, but it just didn’t work out today.
“I have skied maybe four days of super-G since September. I have definitely struggled this season in super-G, because I haven’t really had any training and I just lack the timing. I was strong mentally, but physically I just wasn’t there.”
Vonn hit back from her 2016 injury nightmare with victory over Gut at the recent Garmisch World Cup downhill, therefore she remains confident.
She added, “I think for the next races I will duct tape my hand to my pole because losing it and having that distraction is too much, so I need to stay focused on the course and not on my hand.
“I definitely have more confidence in downhill than I do in super-G. I have four or five training runs before I race on Sunday, so I have plenty of time to get my confidence back and build my way into it.”
