Lindsey Vonn plans to race on the Alpine skiing World Cup next week for the first time in nearly six years.
Vonn, who announced her comeback last month, announced Friday that she plans to compete Dec. 21-22 in two super-Gs in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Starting races is not enough to satisfy a skier who won 2010 Olympic downhill gold, four World Cup overall titles and 82 individual World Cups. It will be about how she finishes.
“While I am very excited to be participating, I definitely have goals and expectations, and I’m trying to be as patient as possible with myself on this journey and take it step by step and not skip any steps,” she said. “I know my way back to a competitive level might take a race or two, but I certainly intend on getting back to where I was before.”
It will mark the 40-year-old Vonn’s first races on the sport’s highest level since she retired after the February 2019 World Championships, citing the toll ski racing injuries took on her body.
Her first race back will be on the 23rd anniversary of her first time racing St. Moritz on the World Cup. From 2001 through 2017, she raced there 30 times between the World Cup and World Championships with five victories, the last in 2015.
“I haven’t had a lot of time to train,” she said, while noting she would have been ready to race this weekend but wasn’t eligible yet. “I think it’s the perfect place to start because I know that hill very well. I love it. And it’s nice to start with super-G as well (rather than the faster downhill), just to kind of dip my foot in and see how it goes.”
She decided to return to skiing after feeling pain-free following partial right knee replacement surgery in April.
Vonn made her competitive comeback last weekend, placing 19th, 24th, 24th and 27th in lower-level downhills and super-Gs in Copper Mountain, Colorado. She used those races as training opportunities more so than competing for placement.
Those results made her eligible to return to the top-level World Cup starting in St. Moritz.
This weekend, she plans to ski as a non-competitive forerunner before the Stifel Birds of Prey World Cup races at Beaver Creek, Colorado, in a downhill on Saturday and a super-G on Sunday. NBC and Peacock will air highlights on Sunday at 4 p.m. ET.
In St. Moritz, Vonn is in line to become the second-oldest woman on record to race on the World Cup. Former U.S. teammate Sarah Schleper did so at age 42 in 2022.
International Ski and Snowboard Federation online records show no other women 40 and older have raced on the Alpine World Cup, though results from the early decades of the World Cup are incomplete.
“I’m not the first person to do it,” Vonn said when asked about being an inspiration to improve the longevity of ski racing for women. “I’m just maybe the first woman to do it in ski racing. I think Simone Biles is the perfect example of what can be done at an older age, and she’s not even old. It’s outside of the confines of what we believe is the right age for the sport, and I think mostly for women, they retire because they want to start a family. It’s not the same life pressures as men have. There are many male ski racers that have been very successful, won world championship medals and Olympic medals at 42, 43 years old (Johan Clarey is the oldest man to win a global medal, 2022 Olympic downhill silver at age 41). So it’s not like it’s not possible. It just hasn’t been done. So I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m just doing what I feel is right for me, but at the same time continuing on what other women have done before me.”
Vonn has not committed publicly to a 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic bid yet. She owns 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, plus made her first World Cup podium there in 2004 and broke the then-women’s World Cup wins record there in 2016.
“When I retired, I think the number one thing that I was sad about was that I couldn’t race Cortina at the Olympics,” she said Wednesday. “In a perfect world, yeah, that would be amazing. But again, I’m trying to stay in the present. It’s a long ways to Cortina. So, again, just put the brakes on my expectations.”
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