Ski Racing - January 16, 2012

Downhill, Jan. 7
Anybody’s game is right up Julia Mancuso’s al-
ley. “She charged,” said her coach, Chris Knight.
“It’s a hill that suits her. It’s technical, it’s tough.
We had one training run, and when you have
one training run she’s always ahead of the pack
a little bit.”
In the No. 17 bib, Mancuso pounced 0.34 sec-
onds ahead of the pack by fighting her way
through the thinly covered, bumpy course. “I
thought I skied really well in the meadows, but I
was going [so] fast that the course caught up to
me, and then I was just hanging on,” said Man-
cuso. “It’s so hard because the gates that you
make mistakes on are the gates that are slowing
everyone down. Even if you make it clean, you’re
probably slowing down.”
Mancuso said she was really in good position and
on line, but there were so many tiny little bumps
from the hard snow that she just got knocked out
of position. “I held on to the finish,” said Mancuso,
who had apparently brushed away memories of
16th and 23rd-place results at the first two down-
hills of the season. “I was psyched. When I got to
the finish and I was in first, I realized that every-
one was probably not skiing perfect, but I knew I
could be beat.”
One of Mancuso’s first big challengers was
obviously her teammate Vonn, but Vonn’s sta-
tus as the favorite was given an asterisk when
she arrived in Bad Kleinkirchheim a little under
the weather after picking up a stomach bug the
week before in Zagreb. She was the 19th woman
to kick out of the start gate but it was clear right
away that she wasn’t feeling very Vonnish. In the
technical upper portion of the course, she hip-
checked hard on just the second turn and fought
hard to make up the lost time but crossed the line
to a red number for the first time in a speed race
this season.
“Already on the second gate I knew I lost a lot of
time and I just tried to make it down,” said Vonn,
who was later bumped to a fourth place finish.
“On this course you can’t push the line too hard
or otherwise you’re not going to finish. It’s defi-
nitely disappointing to be off the podium, but it
happens. You can’t win every race and you can’t
be fast every day, but the most important thing is
to try your best, and I did as best as I could, but it
didn’t really work out.”
Vonn, accompanied on this portion of the tour
by younger sister Laura Kildow, struggled to eat
anything but bread and soup in the days leading
up to races in Bad Kleinkirchheim. “I didn’t have
the balance and I almost stopped,” said Vonn af-
ter the race. “I’ve been sick since Zagreb, and I
haven’t really been able to do eat anything. I just
don’t have the energy and I don’t have strength.
I tried today but it definitely wasn’t a very good
performance by me.”
Three starters after Vonn, Austrian Elizabeth
Goergl regained the form she showed at last
season’s World Championships, where she won
both the downhill and super G titles. The 5-foot,
4-inch, 30-year-old cruised down the hill 0.16
seconds faster than second-place finisher, Man-
cuso, who bagged her best result of the season
with her third podium. Swiss Fabienne Suter fin-
ished half a second back to claim her second po-
dium of the young season.
Goergl’s win, her first downhill World Cup vic-
tory, broke a three-year drought for the Austrian

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