WHISTLER, Canada — Lindsey Vonn arrived at the Olympic Games as hot favourite for the women’s speed events and has lived up to expectations by storming to downhill gold.

The smiling 25-year-old American proved the hype right when she destroyed the field to finish ahead of team-mate Julia Mancuso and Austrian Elisabeth Goergl.

Vonn, the two-time defending World Cup overall champion who has won five downhill races on the elite circuit this season, missed out in Turin four years ago, a crash in downhill training seeing her airlifted off the mountain.

She rebounded to finish a brave eighth in the event but confirmed her credentials when she picked up downhill and super-G titles at last year’s World Ski Championships in Val d’Isere.

Her push for speed has come alongside a high media profile that has recently seen her featured wearing nothing but a bikini on the front of Sports Illustrated magazine.

A charismatic character, Vonn has helped push alpine skiing — often a sport severely lacking personalities — into the spotlight.

She uses social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and has sponsors lining up to be part of the “Vonn-couver” experience.

But Vonn has not arrived where she currently stands without a work ethic her husband and trainer Thomas said was unrivalled.

“It looks easy but it’s not, there’s an awful lot of work behind it,” said the Minnesota-born racer.

In summer, Vonn spends six to eight hours a day, with just one day off a week, in the weights room.

“I’ve never seen a skier train so much and so regularly as her,” said Thomas Vonn, a former international giant slalom racer.

“When I was skiing, I maybe did half the amount of training.”

US team head coach Jim Tracy added: “She’s very professional and that starts by an incredible physical preparation.”

“I’m so proud of her,” said husband Thomas. “What she’s done is really extraordinary.

“At the finish line she was so emotional. I said to her ‘Don’t cry, you really deserve what you’ve got’.”

The Vonn camp will surely not go overboard on the celebrations.

At the Val d’Isere worlds, an impressive haul of medals looked to be on the cards, but an unfortunate accident trying to spray a bottle of champagne, opened with the edge of a ski, at a sponsor’s party left her with a lacerated tendon in her right thumb.

She had to sit out the giant slalom and super combined to rest her hand after surgery in Austria but raced the slalom.

With four disciplines still to go, Vonn has chances to medal in both the super-G and super-combined, and a snowball effect could her see emerging as a realistic challenger in the more technical slalom and giant slalom events.

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AFP

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