Lindsey Vonn barely moved from the tuck position, each aerodynamic turn extending her lead and bringing her closer to becoming the greatest female ski racer of all time.
Vonn raised her arms after crossing the finish line in the women’s super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in one minute, 27.03 seconds for a record-breaking 63rd World Cup win. Austria’s Anna Fenninger was 0.85 second back while Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather finished in third place 0.92 second behind the 30-year-old American.
Vonn’s victory, on the same hill where she reached her first World Cup podium in 2004, breaks the record she jointly held since Sunday with Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Proell. Vonn was embraced by a surprise specatator – golfer boyfriend Tiger Woods, wearing a skeleton mask, at the finish line after breaking a mark that had stood for 35 years.
“It’s amazing, words can’t describe my feeling,” Vonn said on the website of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. “I’m really proud of what I’ve done and I’m excited about the future.”
Vonn had tied Moser-Proell’s mark in the downhill in the Dolomites resort. She is still short of the all-time World Cup record of 86 held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark.
“I definitely felt like the pressure was off today,” Vonn said. “I just wanted to go out and have a good run today. I was relaxed and cool and I think it showed in my skiing. I honestly didn’t know if I would be fast enough. I made some mistakes. I was shocked I was in the lead but very, very happy.”
After gaining her first overall World Cup title at the age of 17 in 1971, Moser-Proell dominated women’s skiing for the decade, winning five more overall World Cup championships, four world titles and two Olympic silver medals. She retired to start a family after clinching the gold medal in the downhill at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid.
Vonn returned this season after two surgeries on her right leg forced her to miss the 2014 Winter Olympics. She won downhills in Lake Louise, Canada, on Dec. 7 in only her second race back, and Val d’Isere, France, on Dec. 20.
Her achievement may give ski racing a boost in the U.S., Vonn said. The world championships will start in Vonn’s hometown of Vail – at Beaver Creek – on Feb. 2.
“America is very record-centric,” she said. “Hopefully this will bring more attention to the sport. It will be good going into the world championships with more interest from the American public.”
A four-time World Cup overall champion, Vonn tore two ligaments and broke a bone in her right leg in a crash at the world championships in Schladming, Austria, in February 2013. Nine months later, she re-injured the knee, requiring a second operation that forced her out of the Sochi Olympics.
It’s taken Vonn more than 10 years to equal Moser-Proell as the world’s most successful female ski racer. Vonn won her first World Cup race in 2004 in Lake Louise at age 20 under her maiden name Kildow.
Vonn has won almost one in five of the 333 World Cup races she’s started, and finished in the top three 108 times. She also won a gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and a bronze in the Super G.
Moser-Proell won 62 World Cup races out of 174 starts, finishing on the podium 113 times.
Vonn’s most dominant performance on the World Cup circuit came at Lake Louise in 2011, when she won her 43rd race by a margin of 1.95 seconds. The Canadian resort is sometimes called “Lake Lindsey” because she’s won there 15 times. Later that season she took her fourth overall World Cup championship as well as titles in downhill, Super G and super combined.
The smallest margin was her 32nd victory in Crans Montana, Switzerland, in 2010, when she beat Italy’s Johanna Schnarf by 0.01 second.
Vonn’s trophy collection doesn’t just contain silverware. She won a cow at Val d’Isere in 2005, which she named Olympe. A second cow, Winnie, followed last month.
