Lindsey Vonn will be remembered for attempting a comeback at 41, completely rupturing her ACL in a downhill race crash nine days before the Winter Olympics,\u00a0competing in the Olympic downhill anyway<\/em>, and then really trashing her leg in the downhill when she clipped a gate with her pole. Armchair commentators will draw conclusions about hubris, daredevilry verging on insanity, and raging against aging. But the incredible story is at age 41 she was leading in the women’s downhill World Cup before the crash<\/strong>! She had won two downhill races outright and achieved five straight podium finishes \u26f7\ufe0f\ud83e\udd47\ud83c\udfc6. Even after missing the second half of the season she came fifth overall. Crashing is easy \ud83e\udd15\ud83e\ude7c; it’s winning races that make her one of the greats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, the top story this season for Mikaela Shiffrin is not<\/strong> her “redemption” by winning the 2026 Winter Olympic women’s slalom. It is her insanely dominant performance in slalom races throughout the season. She won\u00a0nine\u00a0out of ten slalom races<\/em> to win the overall women’s World Cup for the sixth time. She “narrowly came second in the remaining contest, claiming an incredible 980 out of a possible 1000 points…\u00a0six of her nine victories came by over a second”. The GOAT got more \ud83d\udc10-er.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I pointed out in my still-unfilmed interview segment of her on The Tonight Show<\/em><\/a> that in her so-called failure at the 2022 Winter Olympics she came ninth in super-G, which is far from her specialty. Ninth best in the world at anything is an unimaginable achievement for billions of people! But the greats push themselves so hard that they agree with low-talent reporters who characterize it as failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s hard to discern the character of top athletes beyond “fierce competitor” when they have “teams” and “people” handling PR. However, Shiffrin seems to be happy when other skiers do well. At the 2026 Winter Olympics she competed in the odd team combined event with Breezy Johnson, who had just won the women’s Olympic downhill. Johnson posted the fastest downhill time in her part of the combine event, but Shiffrin only came 15th in the slalom part, So the pair “only” came 4th in the world. But that mean that her teammates Jackie Wiles and Paula Moltzan won the bronze medal and Shiffrin seemed genuinely happy for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" actual story: the 41-year-old wins big! Lindsey Vonn will be remembered for attempting a comeback at 41, completely rupturing her ACL in a downhill race crash nine days before the Winter Olympics,\u00a0competing in the Olympic downhill anyway, and then really … Continue reading actual story: forget the Olympics, a dominant season<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A genuine team player?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n