Vonn takes U.S. skiing up to Picabo Street level

WHISTLER, Canada -- Lindsey Vonn lost a World Cup ski race on Friday by one-hundredth of a second on the Whistler Mountain downhill course that will be used for the 2010 Vancouver Games.

Bummer?

Hardly.

Sometimes in ski racing you win when you lose, and this was definitely one of those times for the U.S. skier.

A razor-close defeat to Switzerland’s Nadia Styger allowed Vonn to earn enough points to clinch the World Cup downhill title, pull ahead of Austria’s Nicole Hosp in the World Cup overall race and serve notice that Vonn may be the woman to beat in downhill when she returns for the Olympics in two years.

Vonn, 23, became only the second U.S skier to win the World Cup downhill title, joining Picabo Street, who won consecutive downhill titles in 1995 and ’96.

“It’s great to seal the deal with two races left,” she said. “I don’t have to worry about that anymore. That’s a big check-off on my lifetime goals.”

Vonn, who grew up in Minnesota, remembers as a kid getting Street’s autograph when the Olympic gold medalist visited her hometown.

“Picabo was my idol,” Vonn said.

Styger got her first career downhill victory with a winning time of 1 minute 45.30 seconds, but it was all America after that, with Vonn taking second at 1:45.31 and Julia Mancuso, the defending Olympic gold medalist in giant slalom, finishing third at 1:45.49.

Vonn’s defeat was agonizingly close but not discouraging in terms of her gold-medal Olympic dreams. Vonn made one critical mistake, dumping too much speed on a lower gate, costing her what otherwise might have been a runaway victory.

“I got caught in soft snow and definitely pretty much blew all my speed in the last two gates,” she said.

Vonn said the miscues might have cost her a half-second.

“It’s not a mystery,” Vonn said. “I know exactly where I blew it.”

Vonn’s finish gave her confidence she can return to conquer the course in two years. Known as Lindsey Kildow before marrying Thomas Vonn last fall, she still carries the disappointment of a training-run crash at the 2006 Turin Games that robbed her of a chance to win the downhill gold. Racing despite multiple bruises and a sore back, she took eighth.

Vonn likes her chances on the Whistler course but knows ski racing is a fickle sport. Friday’s downhill was raced in a light snow under overcast skies, which produced flat lighting, something ski racers hate because they can’t see the course’s contours.

“It helps to have a race on the Olympic course, for sure,” Vonn said. “It’s good for me to know the course. I can visualize it a hundred million times before I race the Olympics. But the conditions are going to change. You’re going to have to wait and see until the actual final inspection on Olympic race day. That’s when it’s going to really matter, not really this weekend.”

Another reason why Friday’s second-place finish was important for Vonn?

With nine races remaining, she was able to pull ahead of Hosp in the World Cup overall race. Vonn and Hosp entered Friday’s race tied with 983 points. Vonn earned 80 points for second while Hosp received 16 points for finishing 15th, which gave Vonn a points lead of 1,063 to 999. Both will race in Sunday’s super-combined event at Whistler.

Vonn is trying to become the first U.S. woman to win the overall title since Tamara McKinney in 1983.

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