The War Horse rides, again

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — When you check in to the Mirror Lake Inn in Lake Placid, N.Y., owned and operated by Ed and Lisa Weibrecht, there proudly on display is the bronze medal their son, Andrew, won skiing the super-G in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. Of all the medals the U.S. Ski Team won in Vancouver, that bronze seems perhaps the most incredible. Andrew Weibrecht? Who?

Now there’s only thing more incredible than the bronze he won four years ago. It’s the silver he won Sunday in the 2014 Sochi super-G.

For the rest of this post, please click through to NBCOlympics.com: http://nbco.ly/1bVdxg3

Laurenne Ross makes it 6-for-6

The U.S. women's ski team is so deep that three weeks ago coaches had to make a difficult choice about who to leave off the start list for the downhill at the world championships in Schladming, Austria. Ultimately, they decided, reluctantly, that Laurenne Ross would be the one who wouldn't go.

So who takes second Saturday in a World Cup downhill at the famed Kandahar course in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, site of the 2011 worlds?

Of course.

Tina Maze of Slovenia won the race in 1:40.46, adding to her historic season -- she now has 2,024 World Cup points, most ever, more than Austria's Hermann Maier's previous-best 2,000 in 2000. Maze has totally locked up the World Cup overall title and there are still seven races yet to go.

Ross finished 39-hundredths back, in 1:40.85. Local girl Maria Höfl-Riesch, the 2011 World Cup overall winner, took third, half a second behind in 1:40.96.

Ross became the sixth American woman to finish in a World Cup top-three this season in the downhill or super-G.

Before the start of the 2012-13 season, the U.S. women's speed team, led by coach Chip White, set a goal of landing all six on the podium.

Alex Hoedlmoser, the U.S. team's head coach, went up to White after Saturday's racing was done and said, "We did it," adding a moment alter, "This is really promising as we look ahead to Sochi," and the 2014 Winter Games next February.

On the tech side, meanwhile, Mikaela Shiffrin has won three World Cup slalom races; Shiffrin also won the slalom in Schladming at the world championships.

The race Saturday marked the first top-three World Cup finish of Ross' career. She joins Stacey Cook, Leanne Smith and Alice McKennis as first-time podium finishers.

Lindsey Vonn -- who tore up her right knee in the super-G in early February in the first race of the world championships -- has three downhill victories this season; Julia Mancuso has three super-G podium finishes and, as well, a super-G borne at the world championships.

Vonn, who obviously has missed the last two downhill races, nonetheless still leads the World Cup downhill standings, by all of one point. Maze is second. There's one race remaining.

The race Saturday played out in two different acts.

Act one was consumed by fog. It stayed that way through McKennis' run. She started with bib number 12. Entering the final "Tauber Schuss," she crashed -- hard -- and was airlifted by helicopter to a local hospital, where doctors found she broke a bone in her lower right leg.

Act two was everything that followed. By the time the race started again, the mountain was splashed in sunshine, the visibility perfect, the racing so much faster.

Maze ran 18th, Ross 26th, Höfl-Riesch 20th.

Ross' previous best finish had been fourth, in a super-G, two seasons ago.

"I just put it all out on the line and I'm psyched," she said.

Sorry: Justin Bieber not the secret

Last summer, before dominating the London Games, the U.S. swim team memorably made a just-for-fun video of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." This winter, the U.S. women's ski team is on a killer roll, underscored by yet another memorable performance Saturday, when Lindsey Vonn won the downhill at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, with Leanne Smith third.

That came after Tuesday's night slalom at Flachau, Austria. There, 17-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin picked up her third World Cup victory in her first full year on tour.

Just like the swim team last summer, the skiers will be among the primary U.S. stars next February at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Again, just like the swim team, the ski team's success is rooted in the same fundamentals. There's a strong management team. Great coaches. Obvious talent. And, now the final piece of the puzzle -- a winning culture, the kind of thing the swim video made plain.

The ski team has it, too, and that came shining through in a long, long answer to a reporter's question after Saturday's downhill in Italy. Revealingly, it came not from Vonn but from Smith. The reporter asked about a "family feeling" on the team.

Here is what she said:

"Yesterday, we were talking about on the bus at lunch how often we have been asked this question. And we were trying to come up with ways to -- things to say in response to that. And, first, we were like, 'We listen to Justin Bieber -- Justin Bieber together.' Or, 'Like, we all sleep in one big bed every night.' Or, 'We have like these crazy rituals.'

"No, there are a lot of hard workers on this team. Everybody wants to help each other out and see each other do well and the hard work, whether it be in the gym in the summer or training in Portillo [in Chile] or in New Zealand and the working and the racing and being confident -- as, you know, in any sport or skiing, in particular, and all the variables and things that come at you every day, you need to in the right mind state. You need to be confident in your abilities.

"When you see a teammate come down and be on the podium, you're like, 'Oh, I can do that, too.' You know? You train with Lindsey and Julia [Mancuso], every day, you watch them ski, you see what they do, you can try to emulate that, because obviously they have had a lot of success in the past, and are very experienced. They have been on the World Cup tour for a long time so there is a lot to be taken from them. And -- it's kind of nice to be on the U.S. team right now, I have to say. We're having fun, that's for sure."

Shiffrin -- who spent most of Tuesday doing homework for school before winning the race that night -- now leads the World Cup slalom standings. She has also won races in Are, Sweden, and Zagreb, Croatia, and has won $175,000 for the season.

"Maybe I will make a trip to Maui," she said Tuesday. "I am a 17-year-old. What do I have to do with money? Let's save it up for retirement."

Smith's third-place made for her second podium finish of the year. She took second in the downhill in Val d'Isere in mid-December.

Vonn's win Saturday was her fifth of the season, the 58th of her career. She now stands just four short of the women's all-time record, held by Austria's Annemarie Moser-Pröll.

Vonn, hospitalized in November with an intestinal illness, failed to finish two races in France in December and then left the tour for nearly a month. She missed six starts. In her first races back last weekend, in St. Anton, Austria, she finished sixth in Saturday's downhill and fourth in Sunday's super-G.

Alice McKennis won the St. Anton downhill.

Stacey Cook finished second to Vonn twice in downhills run in Lake Louise, Canada, in December.

It's the first time four different American women have finished top-three in a downhill in a single season on tour. A look at the World Cup downhill points standings shows Vonn first, Cook second, McKennis fourth, Smith sixth, Mancuso 11th and Laurenne Ross 21st.

Meanwhile, the Cortina super-G -- a race Vonn has won the last three years -- is due to be run Sunday. She said, "I finally feel like myself again."

Best in the world -- believe it

Three weeks ago, in Sochi, Russia, Bode Miller, America's best male Alpine skier, smashed his left knee coming off one of the jumps on what will be the Olympic course at the 2014 Winter Games. He tried to ski through the pain the next weekend at the World Cup stop in Bansko, Bulgaria. But it wasn't good. So Miller flew back to the United States, to have the knee scoped at a clinic in Vail, Colo.

If you know Miller and his ways, you know he could well have called off his season right then and there.

But no.

From the get-go, Miller had purchased a round-trip ticket. He was always intending to go back to Europe, back to the next stop, in Crans Montana, Switzerland -- underscoring the incredible culture that is at the core of everything the U.S. Ski Team does, manifested in its motto, "best in the world."

That slogan was so easy to make fun of when the Americans were anything but. But look now, and understand the success that is across the board, from alpine to cross-country to snowboard to freestyle to ski jumping and Nordic combined, and these are just a few of the many examples:

Lindsey Vonn on Sunday won a super-G at Bansko, her 10th World Cup victory this season, 51st lifetime. The 18th super-G win of her career, she is now the World Cup leader in the discipline. Vonn is way ahead in the World Cup overall points race for the 2012 season.

Cross-country skier Kikkan Randall leads the World Cup sprint standings.

The incomparable Shaun White is, plainly put, the best snowboarder on Planet Earth. Kelly Clark has 15 straight halfpipe wins.

Moguls artist Hannah Kearney won 16 straight World Cup races.

Sarah Hendrickson has six World Cup ski jumping victories.

Tom Wallisch has won every slopestyle contest this season but one.

For every Vonn, by the way, there are many, many others. The Americans have depth.

The U.S. women's alpine team, for instance, currently leads every other country in the world in the downhill standings, including the vaunted Austrians and Swiss. Racing in Sochi earlier this month, for instance, four of six American starters made the top-10: Vonn, Julia Mancuso, Stacey Cook and Alice McKennis. And Laurenne Ross was 18th, Leanne Smith 26th.

Someone ought to do a Harvard Business School case study about the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn.

For real.

There are huge corporations that could learn a lot from the U.S. Ski Team. Business-wise. Culture-wise. Success-wise.

All those things are intertwined.

When Bill Marolt took over, USSA had revenues of $8.14 million. That was for the fiscal year ending April 1996.

The fiscal year ending April 2012? Revenues will total $24.75 million.

At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the U.S. team won 37 medals, best in the world. The U.S. Ski Team accounted for 21 of those 37 medals.

Miller won three in Vancouver, including gold in the super-combined; Vonn won two, including downhill gold. The breakout story of the 2010 Games: the four medals won by the American Nordic combined team, testament to 14 years of consistent funding, improved coaching and training.

Marolt, USSA's president and chief executive officer, stayed the course with the Nordic combined program.

He also, over his tenure, has directed initiatives that produced the Center of Excellence, the Park City, Utah, facility that opened in May, 2009, that serves as USSA's all-in-one training center and headquarters; the Speed Center at Copper Mountain, Colo., which gives alpine racers early-season training; an ongoing partnership with 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic venues that includes, among other things, roller ski train development at Soldier Hollow; and an overall organizational focus on what's called "sport science," everything from cutting-edge advances to simple stuff like making sure American athletes drink enough water on airplane trips.

Staying hydrated on those long-haul flights, U.S. sport scientists have found, makes a huge difference in keeping the athletes healthy so they can actually make use of those training days when it's winter Down Under but summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

A new initiative: combining sports and school in an academy. If you are, for instance, Mikaela Shiffrin, and you are turning 17 in two weeks, and you have already made a World Cup podium (Dec. 29, bronze, Lienz, Austria, slalom) but you might have designs on college and beyond -- why should you or your parents be put to that either-or?

"We want to send that message to parents," Marolt said. "This is a big commitment, a big family commitment of time and resources. They're thinking, 'If my child gets to the point where they could be an Olympic great, I'm going to have to make a choice: academics or athletics.' We don't want them to have to make that choice. They can be both."

Marolt, along with Luke Bodensteiner, USSA's executive vice president for athletics, are big believers in the vision thing and in the concept of culture driving the mission. Both, it should be noted, are former Olympic athletes -- Marolt in alpine skiing in 1964, Bodensteiner in cross-country in 1992 and 1994.

"We started with the idea of 'best in the world,' and … they thought I was nuts," Marolt said. "But you can't change it unless you put it out there. And we have done that."

Bodensteiner said the brilliance of "best in the world" is that it is one, "super-aspirational," and, two, easy to understand and translate.

He explained: "When Bill came on and said, 'We are the best in the world, or aspiring to be the best in the world,' he has never wavered from that. That is a very visible pronunciation. That goes all the way down to the deepest levels possible, down to a race in a tiny mountain somewhere. It's a simple concept but also so powerful and people feel good about being brought in.

"Part of the evolution of that statement -- and it has been interpreted so many different ways, us saying we are the best when we were not but it is something that a lot of people have aspired to -- is that it has been a filter for every decision we have made for the last 16 years: Is this going to make us better or not?"

Bode Miller, as things turned out, ultimately did have to call off the rest of his season. He got to Crans Montana and the knee just didn't hold up. But it wasn't for lack of trying. Or buy-in.

"I'm still having fun and as long as skiing is enjoyable, I'm going to continue to do it," Miller said in a statement issued by the U.S. Ski Team.

Marolt, in an interview before Miller's season would come to a close, said, "One of our strengths is the idea that we tried to create a team. Not just an athletic team but an entire organizational team where everybody buys in, everybody understands what it is you try to do. Everybody multitasks and does more than is required.

"That is what makes us so good, everybody pulling on the rope at the same time and in the same direction. That is a hard one. It is difficult to achieve, because of the personalities and the profiles of every individual, from the chairman of the board to the person answering the phone in the lobby. But it's a good team, and the team is our strength."

Lindsey Vonn: 47 and counting

After she had won the super-G Sunday at one of her favorite spots, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, and made history yet again, Lindsey Vonn shared a little bit of herself. Last week, at the World Cup stop in Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria, Lindsey was suffering from a stomach illness. She came in 18th in the super-G -- the first time in 19 starts she missed a World Cup super-G podium. It was her worst finish in super-G in five years.

"You know," she said after winning Sunday, her 47th career World Cup win, "for me, if I don't have the strength, I can't do what I want to do and I don't trust myself. Confidence and trust are very important things in my skiing. I have those two things back.

"I knew what I had to do to win the race today and I think I executed my plan well. I"m really happy the way the whole weekend went and I'm really proud of buy whole team. As a team, we had an incredible weekend. Stacy and Julia and Leanne and Laurenne and everyone is skiing really well. So I think for the entire U.S. team -- it was very successful."

There you have it, in two paragraphs -- Lindsey Vonn, the 2012-season version.

Confidence and trust in her own skiing and the bond with her team that helps keeps her going amid the -- many -- other distractions in her life, some deeply personal.

The victory lifts Lindsey into third on the all-time World Cup win list, ahead of Austria's Renate Goetschl, who has 46. Switzerland's Vreni Schneider has 55; Austria's Annemarie Moser-Proell has 62.

"The records in skiing are really important to me," Lindsey told reporters afterward.

"It's the history of our sport and it's something you can look back on and be proud of what you've done with your career. I never thought that I'd be able to reach as many victories as I have now. Renate has always been such a role model. I can't believe I'm at a point where I can stand alongside her in history."

Lindsey hadn't won a World Cup race since a super-G Dec. 7 at Beaver Creek, Colo. She led Sunday at every interval, finishing in 1:26.16. Germany's Maria Hoefl-Riesch, last season's World Cup overall winner and Lindsey's longtime friend and rival, finished second, in 1:26.77. Slovenia's Tina Maze took third, in 1:27.02.

Cortina, as Lindsey noted, is where she first made her first World Cup podium -- eight years ago, in the downhill. The victory Sunday was her fourth straight super-G win in Cortina and sixth at the Italian resort.

"I say it every time I come here: Cortina is always a special place for me … I like the hill. It's -- the snow is perfect here. It's always dry, dense snow, similar to Colorado where I grew up skiing."

When you have that and when you ski with confidence and trust in yourself, you get classic Lindsey -- a "good combination of risk and aggression but still staying in control," as she put it immediately after the race, declaring, "I'm happy."

Julia Mancuso finished fifth, just 12-hundredths back of Maze. Leanne Smith finished 10th -- the third-best result of her career. Laurenne Ross took 13th -- her second-best result-ever. Stacey Cook, who had finished sixth in Saturday's downhill, finished 25th. Alice McKennnis landed in 38th.

The Americans were awarded what's called the "Cortina Trophy," which goes to the most successful team over the weekend. Imagine how even a few years back how that would have been unthinkable -- an American ski team winning such an award in the heart of Europe.

With the victory, Lindsey now leads the 2012 overall World Cup standings by 291 points over Maze. She leads the super-G standings by 87 points over Fabienne Suter of Switzerland.

All in all, there was only discordant note to the day. Asked by a reporter about Denver's blowout loss to the New England Patriots in the NFL playoffs Saturday night, Lindsey -- who, remember, is a Colorado girl and even Tebowed after her super-G win in Beaver Creek -- said, "I'm really bummed out the Broncos lost."

Lindsey Vonn +1.95 seconds = wow

Lindsey Vonn didn't just win her 43rd World Cup race Friday. She absolutely dominated.

She won the downhill in Lake Louise, Alberta, up in Canada, by 1.95 seconds. That's crazy.

Alpine skiing is typically decided by tenths or even hundredths of a second. Bode Miller won the Birds of Prey World Cup downhill in Beaver Creek, Colo., Friday by four-hundredths of a second. That made it a banner day for the U.S. Ski Team; the last time there was a double downhill American win was on Dec. 3, 2004, again by Bode and Lindsey. His win Friday was fantastic. Hers -- simply outrageous.

It has to be said: The other racers on the tour are, like, really good, too.

Lichtenstein's Tina Weirather, skiing from the back of the back -- bib number 40 -- was the only racer to come within two seconds of Vonn. Dominique Gisin of Switzerland, who had put up Thursday's fastest training run, was 2.06 seconds back for third place.

Vonn's winning time over the 3,068-meter course: 1:53.19.

Another American, Alice McKennis, competing in her first World Cup race since breaking her leg last year, finished eighth.

At every ski race, there's a live timing system set up so that you can follow along. It lets you see not only whether a particular racer is ahead or behind of the leader at certain intervals but also just how fast each racer is going.

Lindsey Vonn started 22nd Friday. That's an ideal start spot. On purpose, alpine racing officials group the best skiers from roughly the 16th to 22nd start slots.

That means Lindsey knew going down what her chief rivals had done.

She also knew this particular course like the back of her hand. She has seen more success here than anywhere else on tour -- before Friday, winning eight races and standing on the podium 14 times.

At the same time, it was windy out there. "I could feel the wind heavily when I was skiing," Lindsey would say later, adding, "I just tried to ski as aggressively as I could."

At the first interval Friday, she was already four-tenths of a second ahead. At the second, she was 1.07 seconds up. The first speed clock got her going 124.8 kilometers per hour, or 77.5 miles per hour. That's on ice, not snow;  ice is how the World Cup surfaces are set up.

At interval three, her lead was 1.22 seconds. At interval four, 1.35.

The second speed clock got her going 127.9 kph, or 79.5 mph.

Think about that for just a moment. At that point in the course, she already had been skiing for 80 seconds. She had about 30 seconds yet to go. This is the point where other racers start to give in; their legs start to burn and they start slowing down.

Not Lindsey Vonn. The clock proved it. She was going faster on the bottom of the hill than on top.

Think again about what she was doing. Think about driving your car on ice at 79.5 miles per hour, about what the sensation of that would be like. Now think about that would be like without being inside the heated comfort of the drivers' cockpit -- the split-second decision-making, the rush of the trees by your eyes, the slash of your skis through the ice, the whip of the cold wind on your face.

At interval five, her lead was up to 1.89 seconds. At the finish, it was 2.06, over Gissin. Weirather, 18 spots later, had yet to come.

The 1.95-second margin is by far the most Vonn has ever won by. She said she had won once by 1.2 seconds -- in Lake Louise, of all places.

 "I really couldn't believe it when I got to the finish today," Vonn said later at a news conference. "My goal today was to ski as aggressively as I could and try not to make any mistakes."

She said a moment later, a little laugh in her voice, "It was awesome."

It was, and all the more so because of what's going on in her personal life -- the recently announced split from her husband, Thomas. Her sister, Karin Kildow, came to Lake Louise to be there for her. Her U.S. teammates were being so supportive, she made a point of saying; so was Maria Hoefl-Riesch, her longtime friend; so were "the entire World Cup girls."

Even so, just to be out there on the Lake Louise course Friday was probably the very best thing for Lindsey Vonn.

"When I'm on my skis and I'm on the mountain," she said, "I feel calm and I feel comfortable. I love skiing. I love going fast. I love downhill. Today, even if I didn't win, just racing and being out on the mountain is what I need."

But, she was asked at that news conference --  to win by such a huge margin?

This is the secret to Lindsey Vonn's success -- and, for those expecting magic, it's so elemental. It's hard work and ferocious drive, all of which she made abundantly plain in one of the most incredible performances you would ever want to see in a nearly two-second victory at Lake Louise, Alberta:

"I try to work hard every day. I try to do my best every day. I always want to try to improve. Even if I win a race, I still want to improve. I think it's just that I am never satisfied. That keeps me motivated and keeps me wanting to do my best every day."