CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — World champion Breezy Johnson led a weather-interrupted final training for the women’s Olympic downhill on Saturday but injured U.S. teammate and comeback queen Lindsey Vonn was again the talk of the slopes with the third-fastest time.
Johnson set the pace with a time of one minute 37.91 seconds with Germany’s Kira Weidle-Winkelmann 0.21 slower and Vonn 0.37 off the pace.
Vonn was the 15th starter, her left knee in a brace under the race suit, and the session was then halted by low clouds and falling snow after 23 of the 43 skiers on the list had gone down the mountain.
The skiers from bib 24 onward were recorded as non-starters.
Vonn, the 41-year-old 2010 Olympic champion, has vowed to race on Sunday despite rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament in Switzerland last week. She did not speak to reporters other than replying “good” when asked how the run had felt.
Her coach, Aksel Lund Svindal, a double Olympic gold medalist, was again left to pick up the slack.
“I hope you will talk to someone else tomorrow and I think you will,” he said smiling, after patiently working his way along the lines of television cameras and then facing the print media for another barrage of questions at the finish area.
The Norwegian said he had seen nothing to change his opinion that Vonn could win a medal, although Friday’s anxiety at her first training run down the mountain had morphed into more of a nervous tingle of expectation for Sunday’s race.
“It was important to get on the snow today, because it’s a very different run,” he said.
“She did pretty good. … When she came down she talked about skiing and was calm and didn’t talk about the knee at all. I figured that’s a good sign.
“She knows she will have to push harder tomorrow because the rest of the girls will and it’s an Olympic downhill.”
Vonn had one or two obvious wobbles, her left knee looking occasionally shaky, and Svindal suggested the American was compensating for the injury by trying to land with more weight on her right ski off the jumps.
“It’s going to wobble, right?,” he said. “We’ll try to have less of that tomorrow if we can. … But because the impacts here in the landings are flat, it’s a hard impact.”
Svindal said it had been to Vonn’s advantage to start 15th and he was relieved she managed to get a run before the halt.
Austria’s Ariane Raedler was fourth fastest, although training times can be misleading as skiers check terrain and lines, with Germany’s Emma Aicher fifth.
Italy’s Federica Brignone, returning from multiple leg fractures and a torn ACL, was seventh on the timesheets and said she would decide later on Saturday whether to race.
–Reuters, special to Field Level Media
