In the final race of her career, Lindsey Vonn claimed downhill bronze at the 2019 World Championships in Åre, Sweden. She skied on knees so damaged that a seventh surgery waited for her back in the United States.
A twitch in the gate, then she flew
High winds forced organisers to shorten the course, but Vonn stood third in the start order, her right leg twitching. She had promised to come out with “guns blazing,” and she trailed by only 0.023 seconds at the first split.
By the finish she had built a 0.033-second lead and held the top spot through five skiers. Slovenia’s Ilka Štuhec, the reigning champion, then crossed 0.49 seconds faster, pushing Vonn into bronze behind Switzerland’s Corinne Suter.
Medals across six championships, on one last knee
The bronze came five days after a super-G crash that gave her a black eye and a bruised rib, and three months after she tore a left-knee ligament. She became the first female skier to win medals at six different world championships.
With her fifth career downhill medal at a worlds, she matched the record held by Annemarie Moser-Pröll and Christel Cranz. At 34, she was also the oldest woman to step onto a world-championship podium.
“I laid it all on the line and that’s all I wanted to do today,” Vonn told reporters. “I have to admit I was a bit nervous, probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life.”
After she left the finish area, Vonn embraced Ingemar Stenmark, the only skier with more World Cup wins than her 82. The bronze landed on the same Åre slope where her first championship medals arrived twelve years earlier.
