Lindsey Vonn broke Annemarie Moser-Proell’s 36-year-old record for the most International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup downhill victories with a historic 37th success today in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The 31-year-old American superstar completed the Olympia delle Tofane course in 1min 37.01sec to finish 0.28 seconds clear of Canadian silver medallist Larisa Yurkiw.
It comes a year after she equalled and then broke Austrian Moser-Proell’s record of 62 overall World Cup victories at the same Italian resort.
Vonn has now claimed 72nd overall races, meaning she is also closing in on the best men’s mark of 86 held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark.
“It’s pretty awesome,” she said.
“I’ve won so much here, and there was just a lot of pressure.
“So I tried to stay focused on my skiing, and I thought I skied really well on the top.
“I went a little bit too straight on the bottom, but I was able to pull it off.”
Switzerland’s Lara Gut of Switzerland finished third, 0.67 behind, to stay 10 points clear of Vonn in this season’s overall rankings.
Vonn holds a mammoth 122 point lead over Yurkiw in the downhill standings, having won four of the five events so far.
Italy’s Peter Fill triumphed in the men’s downhill today in Kitzbühel, meanwhile, crossing the line in 1:52.37 to finish 0.37 seconds clear.
Swiss duo Beat Feuz and Carlo Janka claimed second and third respectively in a race marred by several spectacular crashes.
Among the most dramatic of these involved Norway’s Aksel Lund Svindal, the winner of yesterday’s super-G in the Austrian resort, who ended his race with a front somersault into the safety net but is not thought to be injured.
He still leads Fill by 145 points in the downhill standings.
In tough conditions which left action delayed for an hour, Austrians Georg Streitberger and Hannes Reichelt were others to crash out.
- By Nick Butler this article was republished with permission from the original publisher Inside the Games www.insidethegames.biz