Lindsey Vonn made her first podium since returning from a five-year retirement, finishing second in the super-G at the World Cup Finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, in her last race of the season.
Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami won Sunday’s race — and the super-G season title.
Vonn finished 1.29 seconds back in second place in what was likely her last World Cup race on U.S. soil, 11 months before she hopes to race at a fifth Olympics at the Milan Cortina Games.
“I usually do better when the pressure’s higher,” Vonn, an 82-time World Cup winner and the 2010 Olympic downhill champion, said on NBC Sports. “It’s the last race of the season. I just put it all on the line. This is the level that I know I can ski. I know I can even do better than that. It’s been a rough season of people saying that I can’t, that I’m too old, that I’m not good enough anymore. I think I proved everyone wrong.”
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Vonn, 40, shattered the record of oldest women’s World Cup podium finisher. Austrian Alexandra Meissnitzer made her last podium at 34 years and nearly 9 months old in 2008, according to ski-db.com.
Vonn made the first podium of her comeback in her 13th World Cup race. Her best previous finishes this season were sixth in a downhill and fourth in a super-G on Jan. 11 and 12.
“This year has just been really up and down, and it’s been hard to stay positive sometimes, especially because people are telling me that I should just quit — again,” said Vonn, whose 138 World Cup podiums are tied for third-most in history and 408 World Cup starts are one off Austrian Renate Götschl’s female record.
She’s had a couple of crashes this season, had trouble adjusting to her equipment and even made big mistakes in some runs. But her right knee — partially replaced last April after major surgeries earlier in her career — has stayed healthy. She hasn’t had to ice it once for the first time in maybe a decade.
“So it wasn’t about how I was physically this year,” she said. “It was just I couldn’t put all the pieces together in one run.”
Until Sunday. Vonn was in tears afterward.
“I’m passionate about what I do; I love skiing. That’s why I’m here,” she said. “When you love something and you work hard at something, it feels really good when you’re finally rewarded. It was joy. It was relief. It was satisfaction in the fact that this adventure that I set myself on is worth something.”
Vonn’s goal in her comeback is to make her fifth Olympic team in 2026, then retire for good next year. She’s well on her way.
A nation can qualify up to four skiers per Olympic race, and Vonn is the third-ranked American this season in the downhill and second in the super-G. The Olympic team for the Milan Cortina Games will be named next winter.
“Today meant everything to me,” said Vonn, whose 12 career World Cup wins at Cortina are a record for the venue. “This is the road now to Cortina next year.”
Next season, the World Cup is expected to have one U.S. women’s stop in Copper Mountain, Colorado, for a giant slalom and slalom. Vonn has been skiing exclusively the speed events of downhill and super-G in her comeback.
“I really wanted to do well at home,” she said. “It’s very rare in my career that I’ve ever been able to ski a speed event on home soil.”
The World Cup Finals continue Tuesday with the women’s giant slalom. USA Network airs live coverage of the second run at 2 p.m. ET.
