Getty Image
Lindsey Vonn was forced to miss the Winter Olympics in Sochi after tearing her ACL in 2013, but the skier made her triumphant return to the Games for the first time in eight years when she touched down in Pyeongchang a couple of weeks ago in pursuit of more medals (and a Valentine’s Day date). Vonn managed to take home the gold in the women’s downhill in Vancouver in 2010, and she looked to achieve the same result when she traveled to the peak of the Jeongseon Alpine Center for what many people (correctly) predicted would be her final Olympic downhill race.
Vonn finished her run poised to take home the silver medal before being pushed into the third position thanks to the performance of Norwegian Ragnhild Mowinckel (which was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid). She essentially secured the bronze medal after the few serious contenders remaining failed to top her time, and viewers were forced to listen to Bode Miller talk about wind for the next 30 minutes because NBC was afraid of fucking up their coverage of another ski event.
After the race, Vonn gave an emotional interview in which she said she was happy with her performance and hoped that it would have made her late grandfather— a Korean war veteran who was planning to return to the country for the Olympics before passing away last year— proud of her. There’s no telling how he would have felt about her third-place finish, but if he’d had a similar reaction as Vonn’s father, he would have been underwhelmed.
Alan Kildow spoke to USA Today to share his thoughts on the race, and it appears the reporter who mentioned the support Vonn’s family has given spoke a little too soon based on what her dad had to say:
“It’s great skiing, but it reminds me of something that [former skier] Buddy Werner used to say. He said there’s two places in the race, first and last, and I only want one of them…
She needed to go for it a little bit more. She needed to risk more… just little, little spots. Just not quite risking enough. Not straightening the line out, just the ski was little … not quite carving in some places like it should have. But a great result. A great result.”
At least Vonn knows she has Dwayne Johnson in her corner.