Lindsey Vonn won the super-G at Lake Louise on Sunday to complete a sweep of this weekend’s World Cup races in her first competition since she announced she was going through a divorce with her husband of four years.
The American also won both downhills at the mountain resort west of Calgary. The only other woman to sweep all three World Cup races at Lake Louise was Germany’s Katja Seizinger in 1997.
“It’s definitely a lot more than I expected considering everything that’s going on,” Vonn said. “I didn’t come into this race expecting this. Now I’m leaving here with a lot of confidence going into my home race, feeling good and ready to compete. It really couldn’t have gone any better.”
Photo: Reuters
If Vonn was going through any sort of emotional turmoil, it did not show in her racing here. The 27-year-old from Burnsville, Minnesota, won both downhills by over a second-and-a-half, an eternity in downhill racing.
She completed Sunday’s super-G in 1 minute, 20.21 seconds, just 0.19 seconds faster than Anna Fenninger of Austria. Julia Mancuso of the US was third for the second straight year in 1 minutes, 20.92 seconds.
Vonn, who lives in Vail, Colorado, will head home to prepare for tomorrow’s super-G at Beaver Creek. It was moved there from Val d’Isere, France, where a lack of snow forced skiing officials to reschedule the event.
“I really would love to win at home, so I’m going to look at the video and make sure in Beaver Creek that I clean some turns up and make sure I’m skiing a little more aggressive than I skied today,” she said.
The Olympic downhill champion has won 11 World Cup races at Lake Louise. She has 45 wins overall, just one behind Renate Goetschl for third on the all-time list.
Vonn leads the World Cup standings with 422 points. Germany’s Viktoria Rebensburg is well back in second with 286.
Vonn lost last season’s World Cup title to Germany’s Maria Hoefl-Riesch by just three points. Hoefl-Riesch was fifth on Sunday.
Vonn said she spent part of her summer training with men, including current men’s World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway.
“I just look at what the men are doing and try to really improve and go in that direction,” she said. “I want to ski more like the men do and take that tighter line and really have that strength and be dynamic like they are. It’s really tough to do, but I’ve trained a lot with them this summer.”
“When you see people go faster, you try to catch up to them and that’s helped me push my skiing to another level,” she added.
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