Lindsey Vonn places 15th in downhill at ski worlds. She called it a 'practice run for the Olympics'

SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — One spot ahead of Sofia Goggia. Four spots ahead of Malorie Blanc, the emerging Swiss racer 19 years her junior.

A 15th-place result in the world championship downhill may have marked unchartered territory for Lindsey Vonn on Saturday. After all, the American had never finished outside the top 10 in her best event at a worlds or Olympics.

But it was still respectable, and better than the majority of the 33-woman field.

Having only recently returned to ski racing at age 40 with a new titanium knee, and having hooked her right arm on a gate in the super-G two days earlier while fighting off cold- and flu-like symptoms all week, Vonn called her performance “good progress.”

“Of course (at) world championships I always have high expectations of myself. And when everything is working together, I know what I’m capable of,” she said. “Right now, I don’t have all the puzzle pieces put together. I have the corners. I’m missing some of the middle pieces. But all in all, the biggest goal was to have a plan and execute it.”

Shuffling the pieces

Vonn’s long-term goal remains being competitive at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics. She told The Associated Press in a recent interview that she plans to retire again after the Olympic skiing competition in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where she holds the record of 12 World Cup wins.

“In the start, I put pressure on myself as if it was a practice run for the Olympics, and I did exactly what I came here to do,” Vonn said. “Clearly, not everything is working as well as it should. I know I can be stronger. I know I can get my material to work better. It’s like jumping in a Formula 1 car and having no training.”

Vonn’s longtime ski technician Heinz Haemmerle retired, so her equipment supplier Head assigned her Chris Krause, who formerly worked for Didier Cuche and Bode Miller, for her comeback. But then Krause got sick, so she was assigned yet another technician, Rene Meusburger.

“A lot of pieces are on the board but not in the right place,” Vonn said. “It’s good progress. I’m ahead of Sofi (Goggia). And I think in Cortina, she’s the No. 1 one person to beat there. So it’s not like I’m skiing badly."

Vonn finished 1.96 seconds behind the winner, American teammate Breezy Johnson.

Lauren Macuga, another American, placed fifth to follow up her bronze medal in super-G two days earlier.

“I think that’s amazing for Lindsey,” Macuga said. “It’s so impressive that she’s here at world champs after six years off … And I know she’s just going to keep building."

Up next for Vonn is the team combined event on Tuesday.

The women’s downhill in Cortina for the Olympics will be held in exactly a year: on Feb. 8, 2026. So where does Vonn hope to be by then?

“Not in this same position. I’ll tell you that,” she said. “I hope to be in a much different place in a year. But I did think about that in the starting gate. That was the biggest goal for me, to bring myself to the right place mentally, have that clarity and have that precision. And I did exactly what I wanted to do. So for me mentally, that gives me a lot of confidence knowing that I can execute when the pressure’s on.”

‘Bring it on’

Vonn, it should be noted, has a history of going out with a bang.

She won bronze in downhill in Pyeongchang in 2018 at what then appeared to be her final Olympics. And then took another bronze in downhill at the 2019 worlds in her final race before retiring.

Still, Vonn has faced criticism in Europe for returning to such a dangerous sport at an age that no woman of her caliber had ever raced at before.

“There’s always going to be critics, no matter what I do someone is going to talk (expletive) about me,” Vonn said. “Honestly, if you don’t have haters then you’re probably not doing that well. So bring it on.”

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Associated Press writer Eric Willemsen in Vienna contributed to this report.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing