Lindsey Vonn’s time atop the downhill standings is over.
Italy’s Laura Pirovano and Germany’s Emma Aicher bumped the injured Vonn down to third in the season standings after the second downhill at the World Cup in Val di Fassa, Italy. Pirovano now leads the race for the season title after her second downhill win in as many days with 436 points. Aicher is 28 points behind with 408 points.
Vonn, who has 400 points, could slip even further with one race still to go. Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann (351), Austria’s Cornelia Huetter (344) and Olympic downhill champion Breezy Johnson (333) are also within 100 points of Vonn and could surpass her at the World Cup finals later this month.
Vonn said in an Instagram post Friday, March 6, that she knew this was coming.
‘I didn’t want to win the title to prove anything to anyone. I did it because I knew I could. I just wish I had a chance to fight until the end to try and get it…’ Vonn wrote.
Vonn is currently recuperating from the serious injuries she suffered in a crash during the Olympic downhill last month. She has a complex tibial fracture, a tibial plateau fracture and fractured fibular head, all in her left leg, and also fractured her right ankle.
Vonn also said she had compartment syndrome. If not for her longtime orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Tom Hackett, Vonn said she could have lost her leg.
‘Compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body, that there’s too much blood, and it gets stuck, and it basically crushes everything in the compartment,’ Vonn said in an Instagram post on Feb. 23. ‘All the muscle and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies. And Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated.’
Vonn claimed the No. 1 bib by winning the season’s first downhill, in December. She was on the podium in every downhill race, and took a sizeable lead into the Milano Cortina Olympics.
A season downhill title would have been Vonn’s ninth, tying Mikaela Shiffrin’s record for most in a single discipline. Making it even more remarkable is it would have come at 41, and after Vonn had been retired for almost six years.
Vonn also was skiing with a partial knee replacement, a first for an elite-level skier.
‘At the beginning of the season no one would have ever believed I would be even close to this position. And I bet people would have laughed if it was even suggested. But winning the title was my goal,’ Vonn wrote.
But with four races still left after the Games, the title was still up for grabs and her absence opened the door for other skiers.
Pirovano, who was sixth in the Olympic downhill, made the biggest move, earning 200 points just this weekend with her two wins. Aicher, the silver medalist in Milano Cortina, was poised to take the lead from Vonn after a fourth-place finish last weekend and a second in the first downhill on Friday, March 6. But a 12th-place finish Saturday, March 7, has her chasing Pirovano now.