BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Before starting down the track, ski racers often receive course reports by radio, detailing conditions and delivered by teammates at the finish who skied the course ahead of them.
It’s not every day those reports come from Lindsey Vonn, three-time Olympic medalist, 82-time World Cup winner and one of alpine skiing’s greats.
But they did on Saturday, when Vonn foreran the downhill course at Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey World Cup course, testing the track for conditions and safety before some of the world’s top skiers hit the slopes — and radioing up to her American teammates encouraging them to send it.
The sun was high, the course was fast and the mood was celebratory as Vonn came through the finish in a spray of snow, waving to cheers from a packed crowd. As a forerunner, her time has not been released and did not count for the official standings, topped by Cornelia Huetter from Austria with a time of 1:32.38.
“I am so friggin’ happy to be back here,” Vonn said in an interview with Birds of Prey commentator Parker Biele after forerunning the course.
She’s baaackkk 😏
From her 2011 super-G win to forerunning the historic women’s Birds of Prey downhill, it only feels right that @lindseyvonn‘s comeback starts here.
She’ll do it again for tomorrow’s super-G 🤘#stifelusskiteam pic.twitter.com/aKZhRAAH0I
— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam) December 14, 2024
The last time Vonn raced at a World Cup event was in 2019, not long before her retirement brought on by years of injuries. But last month, Vonn announced a comeback to the world of alpine racing, attempting what very few have done: return to the sport’s top tier, at age 40, after years of retirement.
Vonn raced earlier this month at a lower-level event at Copper Mountain in Colorado, securing the minimum points needed to request a wild card entry into World Cup races, reserved for retired skiers who have found success at the top of the sport. After forerunning at Birds of Prey, she plans to make her return to World Cup competition next weekend at St. Moritz in Switzerland.
That will be more than two decades since Vonn made her World Cup debut in 2000 at age 16. In the years that followed, she became one of the most successful women in alpine racing, developing a reputation for fast, powerful skiing. She often raced with men’s skis and frequently requested to compete on men’s courses, to no avail.
Things have changed since then. On Saturday, women raced the challenging downhill Birds of Prey track at Beaver Creek — typically reserved for men — for the first time. The only other time women competed at the course was in 2011 on a version of the Super-G track, when a lack of snow in France relocated the event for one year only (women also raced an adjacent course at Beaver Creek in 2015). The winner of that 2011 race? Vonn.
“Birds of Prey is a hill that constantly is pulling you down,” Vonn said Friday about her past experience at Beaver Creek. “You can go extremely fast … if you let it take you.”
It’s that past experience that Biele, a former racer herself now commentating at the event, says is invaluable for fellow American women.
“What she’s able to do is provide mentorship to them and really guide them,” Biele said. “She’s raced all these hills before. So having somebody who’s done that and been on these tracks and has had this experience is such a valuable asset to give to this next generation of racers.”
With Birds of Prey historically reserved for men, U.S. women have not had too many chances to race World Cups on home soil.
“To have this opportunity to really take advantage of it is so nice, and to come down to a home crowd, I mean, in Europe, there are some U.S. fans there, but to come down and have someone cheering for you is such a nice feeling,” said Lauren Macuga, 22, who finished fourth with a time of 1:32.90, the fastest of the seven Americans racing Saturday and the only one to break the top 10. “It’s so exciting.”
More than two dozen family members and friends came out to support 2022 Olympian Bella Wright, passing out t-shirts to a largely American crowd — a rare occurrence when many women’s World Cups take place abroad.
“I’ve been coming to Beaver Creek to watch the men since I was 4 years old,” Wright said on Friday before racing began. “It means a lot for me to be here and it means even more to have the women be able to do the same track as the men. I think that historically this is just going to be a moment that we’re going to look back on and realize that women can do more men’s tracks, which is so exciting.”
It’s exciting for locals too. Kathi Kotula has lived in Vail Valley for 27 years and has worked the Birds of Prey event for 14. (She was looking forward to seeing Vail local and alpine great Mikaela Shiffrin race the course, but Shiffrin is out with an injury after crashing last month during a World Cup race in Vermont.)
“We’re used to the grandeur of all the men coming into town and the excitement and the fun, but I swear, this year, when they announced women would be coming, there was a joy in the valley,” Kotula said. “We were so stoked that we had the opportunity.”
As Birds of Prey wraps up and the World Cup circuit continues, attention now turns to how Vonn will perform in top-level races — and whether she could be competitive for the 2026 Olympics.
Her comeback at age 40 is unprecedented among female alpine skiers. When Vonn retired in 2019, she was already the oldest woman to medal in alpine skiing at the Olympics, winning bronze at age 33 at Pyeongchang in 2018. Earlier this year, Italian Federica Brignone, 34, became the oldest woman to win a World Cup race. (Brignone placed ninth in the downhill on Saturday).
But Vonn joins a larger group of professional athletes to compete into their 40s, including sports legends like Serena Williams and Tom Brady. In 2022, French skier Johan Clarey became the oldest alpine racer to medal at the Olympics at age 41.
At Beaver Creek on Friday, Vonn also cited women younger than her pushing age boundaries in their respective sports — namely Simone Biles, who made her third Olympic team this past summer at age 27. In Paris, Biles became the oldest women’s Olympic all-around gold medalist since 1952.
“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 just, it’s outside of the confines of what we believe is the right age for the sport,” Vonn said.
“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 cited a variety of reasons driving her comeback: She missed having teammates, she missed skiing, she missed skiing fast.
But the main reason Vonn returned from retirement was straightforward: Her body could do it.
“What changed my mind was just that I was put back together again,” Vonn said.
It’s an outcome that seemed far from guaranteed after years of high-speed crashes, painful injuries and surgeries, including a series of ligament tears in her knee in 2013 and 2014. She retired in 2019 not long after yet another ligament tear.
“The last years of my career, I think, were a lot more challenging than I let on and anyone really understood,” Vonn said.
Eight months after knee replacement surgery and more than five years since her last race, Vonn said she feels better at 40 than she did at times earlier in her career.
“I couldn’t do, you know, a 10-inch jump, single leg, over the last few years of my career,” she said. “And now I’m doing 20 inches, no problem.”
Whether or not Vonn can get back on top is another question, one that will be answered in the next few months of racing.
She certainly has her skeptics. In the world of sports, comeback announcements are often accompanied by cynics wondering if it’s all just for sponsorships or press coverage. With Vonn’s history of injuries and the dangers of skiing, some fans just don’t think she can do it.
“I’m 10 years on a knee replacement, so I know what that’s all about, but racing’s a lot different,” said Bruce Evans, a spectator who arrived at Beaver Creek Saturday decked out in an American flag ski suit, carrying an American flag signed by everyone from 1960s alpine Olympian Billy Kidd to Vonn herself.
“Especially in downhills, you’re on the edge all the time or you’re not going to be near the top in the finish order. As far as her making the choice, hey, more power to her, especially if she can be successful at it.”
Vonn says she’s all in.
“I don’t just whimsically rejoin the U.S. Ski Team,” she said Friday.
Instead, Vonn said she plans to get back to where she was before retirement.
“Success is not just participating,” Vonn said.
GO DEEPER
With World Cup in her backyard, Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Kilde focus on recovery
(Top illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Dustin Satloff / U.S. Ski and Snowboard / Getty Images; Mine Kasapoglu / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
