ST MORITZ: American skiing great Lindsey Vonn marked her return to the World Cup circuit for the first time in nearly six years by finishing 14th fastest in the super-G at St Moritz, Switzerland, on Saturday.

Vonn, a three-times Olympic medallist and four-times overall World Cup champion with 82 wins, had walked away from the sport in 2019 after a bruising 18-year career where she suffered several injuries.

But last month she announced that she was coming out of retirement at the age 40 to rejoin the US ski team having returned to training following a successful knee surgery earlier this year.

Vonn was the 31st skiier out the gate and she displayed the rhythm and flow of old that had made her the most successful super-G skier of all time with 28 World Cup wins.

But despite skiing on a slope she was very familiar with having won five times at St Moritz, she was well off the pace, finishing 1.18 seconds off leader Cornelia Huetter of Austria who set a time of one minute and 15.18 seconds.

“Today was the perfect start. I had a solid run, got to the finish,” said Vonn who was given a wild card to compete. “The first one is the hardest. I felt really good. The course was a little bit bumpy when I went, so in some sections I was a little more conservative with my lines. But in some sections, I was really fast. There’s definitely a lot that I have left to give, I just wanted to get to the finish today and be solid.”

Austrian Huetter was 0.18sec ahead of Swiss skier Lara Gut-Behrami with the Italian Sofia Goggia completing the podium.

Huetter moves second in the overall standings, 37 points behind Camille Rast of Switzerland.

She is third in the discipline standings 10 points behind joint leaders Goggia, who won the opening super-G of the season at Beaver Creek last week, and Gut-Behrami.

All eyes, however, were on Vonn who has come back to the sport hoping to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

“I was a little bit stressed,” she admitted after receiving a standing ovation on the finish line. “I was a little bit behind. I forgot a couple of things. It was hectic, I just hadn’t done it in a while but it was nice to feel the nerves again.

“It feels so good to have the nerves and to have the butterflies, the adrenaline to push yourself. I always feel it’s just me against the mountain. I love that feeling.”

Vonn, the 2010 Olympic dow­nhill champion, won 20 World Cup titles, including four overall crystal globes, eight world championship medals and secured 137 World Cup podiums. She said last week that she felt stronger than she did in her late 20s, especially after having bone in her knee replaced with titanium which allowed her to straighten her right leg completely for the first time in years.

Vonn will return for a second super-G at St Moritz on Sunday.

“Tomorrow will be better now that I’m used to it,” said Vonn.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2024