Vonn savours breakthrough gold

Lindsey Vonn
12 April 2012

Lindsey Vonn completed her fightback from injury and finally erased the demons of Turin by obliterating the rest of the field and capturing the Olympic women's downhill title at Whistler.

Vonn had battled a painful shin injury in the build-up to the Games amid fears her hopes of gold could be dashed for a second consecutive Olympics following a training run crash four years ago.

But Vonn blasted down the course in one minute 44.19 seconds ahead of American team-mate Julia Mancuso, who took silver in 1:44.75. Austria's Elisabeth Goergl took bronze while fancied Swede Anja Paerson crashed out.

Inevitably talk switched to Vonn's stated hope of becoming the first woman in history to sweep an Olympic alpine programme, but Vonn admitted after her recent setbacks she was just glad to get one gold on the board.

Vonn said: "I gave up everything for this. It's tough when you have an injury - you have to stay on top and do whatever you can to fight back. It's so painful to ski and it's a tough course to ski down, but I did and it's awesome."

She added: "I came here and got what I wanted - a gold medal. It's definitely a huge relief that I finally did it. I had a lot of ups and downs in my career and to be standing at the finish like this is amazing."

Chemmy Alcott was the first racer down the mountain - the only earlier starter, Klara Krizova, failed to finish - and held on for a solid enough 13th place after a run she described as "an amazing experience."

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