WHISTLER, B.C. — Lindsey Vonn dominated the downhill Wednesday, but she didn’t dominate all of the storylines.
Vonn’s American teammate, Julia Mancuso, was a surprise silver medalist. Well sort of anyway. Her recent results didn’t indicate a downhill medal was in her future, but none of her teammates or competitors seemed surprised that Mancuso earned her second Olympic medal Sunday.
Mancuso, the reigning Olympic giant slalom champ, hadn’t finished better than eighth in a downhill since a 2008 World Cup race on this same Franz’s Downhill Course. But she also possesses a knack for stepping up her performance when the spotlight shines brightest, as she demonstrated in Torino four years ago.
“Jules has always been a big-event girl,” said U.S. women’s coach Jim Tracy.
That view is shared by people both inside and outside of U.S. skiing.
“She’s a big-event skier, she’s an awesome skier,” said Canadian Emily Brydon. “She just knows how to lay it down, so that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Mancuso was the 10th skier down the course, and turned heads not by taking the lead, but by obliterating the leading time of Austrian Elisabeth Goergl, the eventual bronze medalist. But even with a .90 second lead, Mancuso knew she’d have to hang on for a medal with the top skiers, including Vonn, still to ski. And while Vonn was able to best Mancuso’s time, no one else could touch the Californian’s run. Vonn and Mancuso gave the U.S. a gold-silver finish in alpine skiing for the first time since 1984 when Phil and Steve Mahre did it in slalom, and Debbie Armstrong and Christin Cooper did it in giant slalom.
And after two seasons of struggles that included a number of injuries, Mancuso was elated with a medal, even if she finished behind Vonn.
“Just being on the podium is really a big accomplishment,” she said. “I was just reminded that the last time I was on the podium was here in a World Cup. Since then I’ve battled with a lot of back injuries. Even last year, I wasn’t having a lot of fun, I was having a hard time — not so much getting out of bed in the morning — but right after the hill I was right back in the room. I couldn’t really do anything. So I re-evaluated what was important to me and I just did a lot of therapy and rehab, got strong, and skied a ton this summer, and from that I gained a lot of confidence.”
Even though that confidence helped Mancuso earn a medal, it might have been a different color were it not for the other story that dominated the race.
Seven skiers failed to finish Wednesday, and an eighth crashed but got up to finish. Several of those crashes happened on the course’s final jump, which seemed to launch skiers farther than they anticipated, leading to a number of scary wrecks.
Sweden’s Anja Paerson, who skied after Mancuso and Vonn, appeared to be on her way to a silver medal. She was .36 seconds off of Vonn’s time at the final check point — Mancuso finished .56 behind the winner — before launching off the jump and sailing roughly 60 meters, leading to a spectacular crash.
After the race, reporters asked racers about the fact that they had only one training run on the course instead of the scheduled three because of weather, and even that wasn’t a true look at the course. Because the training run Monday had to be worked around the men’s downhill, the skiers skied the upper half of the course, stopped, then skied the bottom later in the day.
But despite the carnage, the skiers seemed to appreciate the challenge posed by the technical and bumpy course.
“Before this I would have said the most challenging course we’ve done is St. Anton (Austria), but this is right up there,” said England’s Chemmy Alcott, who finished 13th before ending her run with one of the day’s many crashes past the finish line. “It is the perfect women’s Olympic course. There’s so much terrain. It’s difficult, there’s a lot of DNFs. But if you ask any of the girls, especially those that crashed, they want it to be challenging, so they’ve done a really awesome job.”
The difficulty of the course is one of the reasons Mancuso found herself on the podium. As a skier who excels in more technical disciplines like giant slalom, a course full of turns and devoid of long flats is ideal. And the bumps didn’t seem to be a problem either, according to Alcott, one of Mancuso’s closest friends on the World Cup circuit.
“I got a text last night saying, ‘I love the bumps. They better not take the bumps out,’” Alcott said.
They won’t take them out, but at least one bump will be shrinking.
The controversial final jump will be shaved down for the downhill run of today’s super combined to hopefully avoid similar crashes. It should also help that the start of the super combined is lower than that of the downhill, meaning skiers won’t be as tired at the bottom.
“We will try to ease things down a little bit,” women’s race director Atle Skaardal said to a pack of reporters that surrounded him before Vonn’s press conference. “I think (the course) was acceptable, for sure. But it’s very difficult, no question about it.”
Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more Olympics coverage, go to heraldnet.com/olympics
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