BUKPYEONG, South Korea – Clutching her head in distraught hands at the finish line, Lindsey Vonn knew she blew it. With one little bobble, one ski edge lost on rock-hard snow for a fraction of second, one wrong left turn, she missed her last chance to medal in the super-G at the Olympics.
“I just made one mistake, and it cost me a medal,” Vonn said Saturday.
Vonn had waited eight long years and fought through countless injuries to race in these Winter Games, but was foiled again on the sport’s biggest stage. Her time of 1 minute, 21.49 seconds, was oh-so-close, less than a half second behind winner Ester Ledecka, but it was not good enough for a spot on the Olympic podium.
The final standings were a shocker. Vonn, the greatest female skier in history, finished in sixth place. She and everyone else in the world-class field, was beaten by Ledecka, who will also compete in the Games as a snowboarder in parallel giant slalom. Ledecka represents the Czech Republic, but she has deep roots in Steamboat Springs, where she has honed her snowboarding skills. So is it OK if we score more gold for Colorado?
“All I can say is that I wish I had as much athleticism as she has, to be able to win in two sports at the same Olympics, because I’m only good at one sport, and that’s ski-racing,” Vonn said. “So the fact she is able to beat all of us and be a snowboarder is pretty darn impressive.”
One little mistake will haunt Vonn’s dreams.
“That mistake was really big, and I was only a couple tenths (of a second) out of first,” said Vonn, who firmly believed she had nailed her run until the very end, in the last critical section of this super-G course, with the finish line nearly in sight.
“I felt really good. I was like, ‘Yes! I’ve got this. I’ve got this.’ And I knew I had to focus all the way to the finish because of that turn … I knew exactly what I had to do. But I don’t know, I misjudged how I came in there.”
How badly did she want to win this race?
At her home in Colorado, Vonn sat down every day and did a chore that was painful and humbling for a grown woman. She practiced writing the alphabet. For the greatest female skier of all time, it was a laborious task to make the triangle of the “A” or cross her “T.”
But Vonn scratched out the alphabet relentlessly, without fail. She did it rehabilitation for nerve damage in her right arm, the grisly byproduct of shattering the humerus bone during a November 2016 training run. Vonn did it because she wanted a final shot at Olympic glory at age 33. After a setback in the super-G, her last chance for redemption at the Winter Games will be in the downhill next week.
Except for U.S. snowboarders Chloe Kim and Red Gerard, the Gen Z teenagers that are hotter and hipper than the latest rhyme by Kendrick Lamar, the first week of Olympic competition in South Korea was an exercise in being humble.
America is the land of the free and the home of no second place. We only count gold medals at the Olympics, if you’re an athlete that dreams of chit-chatting with Jimmy Fallon about your life on “The Tonight Show.” Fail to win silver or bronze, however, and if you fly off a ski jump or ride a luge, your fame lasts 15 minutes, or until the next commercial break on TV, whichever comes first.
After a rousing victory by Mikaela Shiffrin in the giant slalom, she missed a medal by less than a tenth of a second in the slalom, the one race where the 22-year-old skier from EagleVail seemed unbeatable. Nathan Chen, believed to be a worthy heir to Scott Hamilton as American figure-skating royalty, skated far too much of his short program on his hands and knees, with the repeated pratfalls knocking him out of contention. And Lindsey Jacobellis, the best female snowboard cross rider in the sport’s history, had another Olympics to forget, finishing fourth.
After taking home 28 medals from Sochi in 2014, the United States is far off the pace four years later. Through seven days of competition, Americans had claimed eight medals, ranking them far behind Germany, Norway and the Netherlands.
So here we were, with the hopes of a country again riding on Vonn, 16 years after her Olympic debut as a teenager in Salt Lake City then known as Lindsey Kildow.
As Saturday morning dawned on the Korean peninsula, the windows of my bedroom were humming again with the mournful song of the relentless wind that has made this the Popsicle Games. There can be the same bluebird skies here that we love in Colorado, but the wind comes straight out of Chicago, and chills everyone to the bone. The fickle, angry wind delayed the start of the super-G by an hour, causing Vonn to wonder aloud if there could be a race that would give every skier a fair shot to post a competitive time.
After the race start was delayed one hour to let the wind calm down, Vonn was the first competitor out the gate. With a fast track devoid of ruts, offering no excuses. She hauled like a runaway truck down the hill, in an event where skiing on the thin, icy edge of control is required for 80 seconds of reckless abandon.
No more than seven seconds from the finish line, making the final big left turn on the course, Vonn lost control for a heartbeat, with her skis headed off course, toward a crash. She scrubbed speed, held a wild line and did not wreck. It was an amazing recovery.
But it also was the one, tiny bobble that cost Vonn, and the United States, yet another chance at Olympic glory.
Woe is U.S.
