Lindsey Vonn crossed the finish line after a strong run, waved to the crowd, and then radioed tips back to her six U.S. teammates still to ski.
After almost six years away from the sport’s top level, the 40-year-old American alpine skiing star was back in a familiar scene Saturday, returning to World Cup racing with a 14th-place finish in a Super-G race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Vonn finished in 1.16.36, 1.18 seconds off the lead of winner Cornelia Huetter of Austria, the 2024 World Cup downhill champion. Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami and Italy’s Sofia Goggia rounded out the podium. Fifty-seven skiers started the race, with 46 finishing.
Racing the track where she’s won three times in Super-G, Vonn got off to a slow start, posting one of the slowest splits in the first sector of the course. But she was much stronger from there, posting top-five times in two of the final three sectors.
Lauren Macuga was the only American faster than Vonn, tying for seventh in 1:15.93.
Vonn won three Olympic medals and four overall World Cup titles before a rash of knee injuries forced her to retire from the sport after the World Championships in February 2019. In her final race there, she took third in the downhill.
A knee replacement surgery earlier this year left her pain-free and contemplating a comeback to the sport. Last month, she told the New York Times she was planning her return, and just two weeks later, she was back in competition, skiing two downhill and two Super-G races at the FIS Fall Festival — a level below the World Cup circuit — at Copper Mountain in Colorado.
Her finishes in those races — which ranged from 19th to 27th — were good enough to earn her the points needed to apply for entry to World Cup races as a wild card. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) — the sport’s governing body — allows for entries for retired skiers who have earned a minimum number of points while also achieving certain benchmarks in the past, such as winning Olympic or World Championship gold medals.
Last week, Vonn served as a forerunner, testing the track for conditions and safety, ahead of the women’s downhill and Super-G races at the famed Birds of Prey World Cup course in Beaver Creek, Colo.
If she’s able to return to World Cup-winning form, it would be unprecedented in women’s alpine skiing. Earlier this year, Italy’s Federica Brignone became the oldest woman to ever win a World Cup race at 34. On the men’s side, though, France’s Johan Clarey medaled at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing at 41 and made a World Cup podium at 42.
When Vonn retired, she was the most successful American World Cup skier of all time, with 82 individual event wins, second only to Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. Fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin — who is recovering from injuries sustained in a fall — has since passed both women and sits one win away from 100.
A four-time Olympian, Vonn’s three medals include downhill gold in Vancouver in 2010. She won World Championships golds in downhill and Super-G in 2009 and was the overall World Cup champion three straight years from 2008 to 2010 and again in 2012.
But injuries stalled her career, cost her the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and ultimately led to her exit from skiing. Her last World Cup race before Saturday was in January 2019 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
That’s also the host venue for the 2026 Olympics. Vonn has not discounted the possibility of competing at the Olimpia delle Tofane course — where she’s won 12 times — in the 2026 Games, and Saturday’s result makes that goal look within reach.
(Photo of Lindsey Vonn during Saturday’s run: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images)
