I watched about six hours of the phenomenal Gold Zone stream on NBC’s Peacock streaming platform today, and counted no fewer than three separate replays of Lindsey Vonn’s downhill ski training run on Saturday, where she recorded the third-fastest time on the course.
It’s easy to understand why. Vonn was always going to be a major star of these games after coming out of retirement for one more shot at Olympic glory at age 41, then looking like her old self in the lead-up to Milan Cortina.
I’ll let Matthew Futterman take it from here:
“Then she crashed and ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee nine days before the race. Then, she announced Tuesday afternoon that she was going to race anyway.
‘Nothing is perfect in life,’ Vonn said, defiantly, in what were her most recent extensive public comments about an effort that feels unfathomable to most. ‘That’s just where I seem to always be. But as many times as I crash, I’ve always gotten back up. As many times as I’ve failed, I always won.’
“That sealed it. Vonn had gone supernova, the blinding light from her stardom and her story obscuring almost everything else, at least from an American perspective, and grabbing the attention of the collective sports psyche to make sure it knew that quadrennial, 16-day tale of glory and heartbreak on ice and snow was on.”
And now, as if the intrigue could grow any further, Vonn’s form over her first two training days in Italy indicates that she could actually win this thing on one ACL. You’re going to want to read Matthew’s brilliant piece to set the stage on what’s quickly becoming the story of these Olympics.
