By Alan Baldwin
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Feb 7 (Reuters) – World champion Breezy Johnson led a weather-hit final training for the women’s Olympic downhill on Saturday but injured U.S. teammate and comeback queen Lindsey Vonn was again the talk of the Alpine ski slopes with the third fastest time.
Johnson set the pace with a time of one minute 37.91 seconds with Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann 0.21 slower and Vonn 0.37 off the pace.
Vonn was the 15th starter, her left knee in a brace under the race suit, and the session was then halted by low cloud and falling snow after 23 of the 43 skiers on the list had gone down the Olimpia delle Tofane piste.
The skiers from bib 24 onwards were recorded as non-starters.
Vonn, the 41-year-old 2010 Olympic champion who has vowed to race on Sunday despite rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in Switzerland last week, did not speak to reporters other than replying “good” when asked how the run had felt.
Her coach Aksel Lund Svindal, a double Olympic gold medallist, was again left to pick up the slack.
“I hope you will talk to someone else tomorrow and I think you will,” he said smiling, after patiently working his way along the lines of television cameras and then facing the print media for another barrage of questions at the finish area.
VONN COULD TAKE A MEDAL
The Norwegian said he had seen nothing to change his opinion that Vonn could win a medal, although Friday’s anxiety at her first training run down the mountain had morphed into more of a nervous tingle of expectation for Sunday’s race.
“It was important to get on the snow today, because it’s a very different run,” he said.
“She did pretty good … when she came down she talked about skiing and was calm and didn’t talk about the knee at all. I figured that’s a good sign.
“She knows she will have to push harder tomorrow because the rest of the girls will and it’s an Olympic downhill.”
Vonn had one or two obvious wobbles, her left knee occasionally shaky, and Svindal suggested the American was compensating by trying to land with more weight on her right ski off the jumps.
“It’s going to wobble, right?,” he said. “We’ll try to have less of that tomorrow if we can … but because the impacts here in the landings are flat, it’s a hard impact.”
Svindal said it had been to Vonn’s advantage to start 15th and he was relieved she managed to get a run before the halt.
Johnson, who still has bad memories of a crash on the piste that ended her 2022 Olympic hopes, expressed some concern with the distance skiers were flying off the jumps.
“I think they’ve just got to shave the jumps,” she told reporters.
“If it gets sunny it will obviously be faster … so that will mean the jumps will fly further.
“I came down today and they had told us that they were going to shave the last jump and I was on the last jump and I was, like, they have done nothing to this.”
Austria’s Ariane Raedler was fourth fastest, although training times can be misleading as skiers check terrain and lines, with Germany’s Emma Aicher fifth.
Italy’s Federica Brignone, returning from multiple leg fractures and a torn ACL, was seventh on the timesheets and said she would decide later on Saturday whether to race.
(Additional reporting by Julien Pretot and Sara Rossi; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Ken Ferris)
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