Lindsey Vonn's first next chapter

It was long ago the case that Lindsey Vonn became the best alpine skier the United States ever produced. Now, as this season’s racing draws to a close, with Vonn on a not-really-100 percent right knee, she has written a fascinating first next chapter to the ongoing story that is her singular career.

The day after clinching this season’s World Cup downhill title, Vonn won the super-G crystal globe, too. In all, she now has 19 globes, the same as Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark.

“I am honored to even be in the same sentence as him,” she said afterward in Meribel, France.

Vonn won the super-G title after finishing Thursday’s race 49-hundredths of a second ahead of Austria’s Anna Fenninger.

Fenninger, racing with bib 15, had come down into first place with a time of 1:08.19.

Vonn raced 19th. By the second interval, it was clear she was on her game, up 41-hundredths. By the finish line, after navigating a tricky jump, the margin was up to that 49-hundredths.

The downhill win Wednesday was Vonn’s 66th career victory, the super-G her 67th. Stenmark has 86. Vonn’s plan is to race through the 2018 season, and the Winter Games in South Korea.

Vonn also said, “It’s nice to know I can still win titles,” particularly when there were so many doubters this season, and of course there were.

Vonn blew out the right knee in a super-G at the 2013 world championships in Schladming, Austria. Trying to make the Sochi Olympics, she hurt the same knee again; she did not ski in the 2014 Games.

By the time she came back to the tour, as she recounted Thursday, she had maybe five days of downhill training, perhaps 20 days of training overall.

There were doubters, but only because those who doubt don’t understand that even when Lindsey Vonn is not 100 percent physically right she is 110 percent mentally tough.

She belongs to a special category of athlete.

It is always risky to go here, to say that so-and-so is different from someone — or everyone — else.

But the evidence is irrefutable.

Vonn’s knee is still not, well, right. You saw it at the world championships last month in Beaver Creek, Colorado, when the course was ridiculously hard and icy, and — for her — she struggled, managing “only” to win one medal, a bronze in the super-G.

She alluded to that Thursday, saying that she now will have all summer to get stronger and that the spring snow conditions in Europe the past couple weeks have been easier on her body:

“The soft snow is really nice. It’s really forgiving on my knee. It feels good. It haven’t had any problems since Beaver Creek. It’s only when it’s icy that I run into problems.”

Where you really heard her open up, meanwhile, is in the way she talked about attacking the course in the way that many racers say they do but she actually then does consistently:

“I am going to risk it all every time I am in the starting gate. That is what makes me fast.”

This is why Lindsey Vonn is the greatest of all time. In response to a question Thursday about whether she was still as fearless as she was before wrecking her knee, she said, yes, and that some of her “poor results” this year were because she “risked too much” or didn’t ski with “the same strength and power.”

She is self-reflective enough to know what can be seen at the bottom of the hill, too: her super-G is probably better now but her downhill, even for her, can be better. “I’m not building pressure at the top of the turn like I can,” she said of her downhilling.

All that, obviously, can and will change with a full summer of training.

What’s also going to change is that she is going to get even better — tougher still — mentally.

The best athletes do this, and she will.

She said Thursday that chasing records has been one of her faults.

Everyone in ski circles, especially Vonn, knew that Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll held the record for most World Cup wins by a female racer, 62, until Vonn broke it earlier this season.

Now Vonn is being asked about 86. The math says that if she keeps winning eight races per season, like she did this year, it’s a done deal.

But. as she said on a call with reporters, “”That’s a lot easier said than done,” adding, “I don’t really look at that as a goal right now. My goal is to keep winning races and keep getting as many titles as I can.”

Her mom, Linda, was on that call, and said at the end of it, “It seems like old times, Lindsey.”

Yes, but there’s a lot more yet to be written.

“I’ll call you later,” Lindsey said to her mom. “I love you.”

Second race back: Lindsey Vonn wins

Lindsey Vonn won Saturday. Improbably, maybe, but only if you don’t know Lindsey Vonn, who is as mentally tough as they come. That she won is good -- obviously -- for her. Better, it’s good for the U.S. team, for alpine skiing and for Olympic sports, because the Olympic world needs stars and Lindsey Vonn is a big star, arguably the biggest in all of winter sports, even though she didn’t even ski at the Sochi Olympics.

For her to be back — it’s just good all around. That’s reality.

Vonn won a World Cup downhill in Lake Louise, Canada — a course on which she has won so many times in recent seasons it has been dubbed “Lake Lindsey.”

Her victory capped a 1-2-3 U.S. finish, with Stacey Cook taking second and Julia Mancuso third, the first-ever U.S. Ski Team podium sweep, men’s or women’s. It marked the best finish in two seasons for all three.

The last nation to sweep a women’s World Cup podium: Austria, 2009.

For Vonn, Saturday’s race was only her second start since knee surgery last January knocked her out of the Sochi Games.

Every day has gotten better here,” she said after winning by 49-hundredths of a second. Mancuso finished 57-hundredths back.

“Today,” Vonn added, “I went a little bit more aggressive than I did yesterday and took some more chances. I’m finally feeling confident again going fast. I’m pushing the limits and I want more speed. I haven’t had that yet until today.”

Vonn’s victory was her 60th on the World Cup tour. She moves within two of the women’s record, held by retired Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll. She has said she not only wants to break that mark but is thinking about the men’s mark — 86, held by Ingemark Stenmark of Sweden — and wants to keep racing through the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Fifteen of Vonn’s 60 victories have come at Lake Louise. She won seven races in a row there from 2010 to 2012.

For most of the past year, Vonn has been in ski limbo.

At the February 2013 world championships, she shredded her right knee in a crash. She underwent surgery.

In November 2013, in a training crash, she injured the knee again.

Last December, trying to suck it up for Sochi, she skied at Lake Louise, finishing 40th, 11th and fifth. In a fourth World Cup race last Dec. 21, she aggravated the knee in a race in Val d’Isere, France. Another knee surgery in January meant no Sochi Games.

Her comeback since has been well-chronicled. She said Saturday evening in a brief teleconference with reporters that the knee feels great; she has to wear a brace when she skis but that's it. No restrictions, she said.

Vonn finished eighth in Friday’s downhill, a race that, for the first time in two seasons, saw four American women land in the top 10, Laurenne Ross in fourth, Mancuso seventh and Cook ninth.

Saturday’s downhill saw the same, the 1-2-3 and then Ross in sixth.

“I always thought this was something possible with our team,” Cook, who made her first World Cup podium since Dec. 1, 2012, said. “I really wanted to be a part of it when it happened. It’s a good day to step up. I’m so excited for Lindsey too. It’s a cool day.”

Mancuso, who has four Olympic medals but hadn’t been on a World Cup podium since March 3, 2013, said, “It’s cool because both of the girls on the podium with me are my age. We’re all the same age—born in ’84—and we’re veterans of the World Cup. We’ve all been working very hard and I’ve grown up with both of them. It’s an awesome day!”

Vonn, in that 10-minute teleconference Saturday evening with reporters, said this:

"I definitely think I shocked a few people. Yesterday I think everyone was, you know, genuinely happy for me and they thought it was a really great start to my season. But I don’t think really anyone expected me to win today. And I could definitely see that on a few of the girls’ faces.

"I could see that my teammates knew it was coming. They know me very well. They were extremely supportive and happy.

"Like I said in the finish, I am not expecting this to happen all the time. I am still, you know, kind of getting a feel for things and building my confidence and getting used to racing again. But, you know, I feel a lot better after the win today. My confidence is definitely a lot -- a lot -- better.

"I just hope to keep the ball rolling and keep improving."

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."

Vonn throws Lake Louise three-peat times two

Lindsey Vonn made it three-for-three on a snowy Sunday in Lake Louise, Canada, winning the super-G, a World Cup victory that capped a spectacular weekend for her individually and, for that matter, the U.S. women's team. Vonn -- just as she did last year -- won all three races in Lake Louise. She won downhills Friday and Saturday. And then she won the super-G Sunday in 1:22.82.

The Lindsey Vonn statistics and numbers show can sometimes seem overwhelming because she is, without question, the finest American racer of all time. Here is just a taste: she became Sunday the first skier ever, male or female, to win three World Cup races at the same venue in two different seasons.

American teammate Julia Mancuso came in second Sunday, 43-hundredths behind. Austria's Anna Fenninger took third, two-hundredths behind Mancuso.

Thus: Americans went 1-2 in all three races this year in Lake Louise. Vonn and Stacey Cook went 1-2 in both downhills. Another American, Leanne Smith, finished eighth Sunday, in 1:24.41. Laurenne Ross was 13th, and Cook 29th.

The victory Sunday moves Vonn into second in the women's all-time World Cup wins list, with 56. Austria's Annemarie Moser-Pröll leads with 62.

Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden is far and away the overall leader with 86 World Cup victories.

Just to make the top-three in the World Cup is difficult enough. Cook, for instance, made 150 World Cup starts before her two top-two downhill finishes this weekend.

It is a measure of how crazy good Vonn is to say that she had been tied with Swiss star Vreni Schneider for all of one day, with 55.

It is another measure of Vonn's brilliance that about three weeks ago, she was in a Vail, Colo., hospital, with stomach pains. When she got out, she literally was having trouble walking from one end of her condo to the other.

"This weekend was a huge boost for my confidence," she said. "I was definitely feeling extremely low after being in the hospital and my poor result in Aspen," a reference to the tour stop last weekend, where she struggled -- hardly a surprise -- in the one event she ran, a giant slalom, visibly exhausted at the end.

"But I knew if there was a place to turn it around, it was Lake Louise. So I just tried to get myself every opportunity to rest and recover for the races this weekend."

She also said, "Every athlete has their favorite hill where they feel confident and comfortable. I know the hill like the back of my hand and have confidence knowing I have won here in the past."

More Vonn numbers:

She became the fourth female skier with 100 World Cup podiums. Moser-Pröll has 114; another great Austrian champion, Renate Götschl, has 110; Schneider, 101.

Vonn's victory Sunday was her 14th in Lake Louise -- 11 downhills, three super-Gs -- and seventh straight on the mountain.

The seven straight wins is a women's World Cup record for a single venue. The prior mark: six, held by Sweden's Anja Paerson at Maribor, Slovenia.

The three wins moved Vonn up significantly in the overall 2012-13 World Cup standings. Slovenia's Tina Maze leads with 397 points; Germany's Maria Höfl-Riesch is second, with 319; Vonn now stands third, with 310.

Vonn won Sunday wire-to-wire.

She was ahead at the first interval by three-tenths of a second, then at the second -- a section of the course that gave her trouble all weekend -- by only three-hundredths. At the third, she had built her lead back up to 42-hundredths and pretty much kept it that way through her tuck through the finish.

Next week the tour heads to St. Moritz, Switzerland. Vonn won the downhill there last year by a second and a half, over Höfl-Riesch.

Six more downhills and seven more super-Gs await on the World Cup calendar.

1-2 again: "Amazing" runs from Vonn, Cook

Even when Lindsey Vonn is not at her best, she's still too good. Vonn skidded hard Saturday on the downhill course at the World Cup stop in Lake Louise, Canada. Anyone else probably would have crashed and gone flying into the nets.

Not Lindsey.

She recovered and not only went on to finish but to win, and by a whopping 52-hundredths of a second.

For the second straight day, American Stacey Cook finished second, another terrific performance. Before this weekend, Cook's best World Cup finish had been a fourth, in 2006, in Lake Louise.

Cook, 28, had been building toward these sorts of results.

She was a member of the 2006 and 2006 Olympic teams, 10th in last-season's downhill standings, fourth in this week's final Lake Louise training run. She said after Friday's second-place run, "I really shut my brain off today -- I know I can ski with these girls. I have been so close for so long, so today I decided it was time. I let my ability take over."

Vonn, after Friday's racing, said of Cook, "I'm so proud of Stacey. She has had the ability to be a podium skier for so long. She really deserved to be there today."

And Saturday, too.

"I hope this is the tip of the iceberg for me," Cook said. "My coaches have told me like for a long time that I'm like fine wine -- that I get better with age.

"This has been a long time coming and I'm just now starting to believe that this is actually happening."

For her part, Vonn was behind Saturday at the first two checkpoints, by 18-hundredths at the first, by 21-hundredths at the second.

By the third, she had worked her way into the lead, up by eight-hundredths.

Then, though -- disaster.

Or what for anyone else would be disaster.

Vonn slipped and got herself turned virtually sideways on the hill.

For an instant, she was on one ski, tottering.

Of course, her momentum and speed were at a standstill.

Cook said, "There was a second there that I actually thought I might win this thing, but Lindsey is amazing. When she made that mistake my heart actually stopped for a second. She’s amazing -- she’s the only athlete that could stop on-course and then still win."

Indeed, Vonn somehow righted herself and aimed straight down the mountain again.

Later, Vonn would say, "I felt like I just hit a few bumps and caught my inside ski and almost went into the fence, then somehow kept going. It was definitely interesting, but I didn't give up. I haven't won with that big of a mistake before."

There were two turns remaining before the flats. Those she turned into flat-out speed.

Numbers don't lie.

At the fourth checkpoint, Vonn was 52-hundredths of a second behind.

By the fifth, she was ahead by a tenth of a second.

In between, there's a radar gun that measures how fast each skier goes. Vonn was clocked at 135.6 kilometers per hour, or 84.2 mph.

At the finish, Vonn was 52-hundredths ahead of Cook.

So -- from the fourth checkpoint to the finish, she made back a full second (and four extra hundredths).

After she crossed the finish line, Vonn shook her head and stuck out her tongue in apparent disbelief.

She said, "Over the last few years I’ve really worked on getting stronger and that helps recover from mistakes like that one. It’s not the way you want to ski, but it helps my confidence to know that I can recover from them."

Vonn has accomplished some outlandish things in Lake Louise both this season, and last. She won Friday's downhill by 1.73 seconds. She won both last season's downhills as well, the first by 1.95 seconds, the second by 1.68.

But to win, when all seemed lost, and by .52-hundredths -- it's yet another chapter in the annals of America's greatest alpine ski racer.

Remember, too: just a little over two weeks ago, Vonn was in a Vail, Colo., hospital, being treated for stomach pains. When she was released, she could barely walk.

The victory Saturday marked Vonn's 55th career World Cup win, tying her with Swiss star Vreni Schneider for second on the women's all-time wins list. Austria's Annemarie Moser-Pröll leads with 62.

It was her 13th Lake Louise victory -- 11th downhill, two super-G -- and sixth straight win on the mountain.

Slovenia's Tina Maze leads the still-young 2012-13 World Cup overall standings with 347 points. Vonn stands fourth, with 210.

The third leg of the three-race Lake Louise series goes off Sunday, a super-G.

Lindsey Vonn's risk-it-all strategy: overall, rewarding

Last season, after making an incredible late charge, Lindsey Vonn lost out at a chance at her fourth straight overall World Cup title by a measly three points, in part because of bad weather on the very last day. She said at the time she was "devastated." This season, Lindsey has skied with unmistakable passion, and that emotion has been further channeled by everything going on behind the scenes in her personal life, including the split early in the season from her husband, Thomas, and a reconciliation with her father, Alan Kildow.

When she skis, Lindsey has said, she is "very clear-minded," on her game like never before -- bluntly, like very few athletes, American or otherwise, in any sport, have been in any season.

Racing Friday in Are, Sweden, Lindsey won a World Cup giant slalom.

It was her 11th victory of the season, and 52nd of her career. It locked up the 2012 overall World Cup title -- obviously, her fourth in five years.

"I don't know what to say. I just wanted to have two really aggressive runs today," Lindsey said at the bottom of the hill, her U.S. teammates cheering.

"I have nothing to lose. I'm just having fun. My sister is here," younger sister Laura. "My teammates are so cool, cheering me on in the finish."

She added, "I am just really excited."

Some facts and figures, and keep in mind two things. These numbers and statistics can only suggest how dominant Lindsey has been. And the season is not yet over:

Lindsey's four World Cup overall titles are the most by an American skier. Phil Mahre had three.

The most-ever? Austria's Annemarie Moser-Pröll, with six, won in the 1970s. Lindsey, with those four, is now alone in second place. Croatia's Janica Kostelic, Switzerland's Vreni Schneider and Austria's Petra Kronberger had three apiece.

The 52 career victories leave her only 10 behind Moser-Pröll. Lindsey got to 50, in early February, faster than any female racer in history. Lindsey's first win came on Dec. 3, 2004, a downhill in Lake Louise, Canada.

The 11 victories this season match the U.S. record Lindsey set two seasons ago.

For the season, Lindsey now has 1,808 World Cup points. That's an American record.

Lindsey had 1,788 points when she won the 2009 overall.

In second place in the 2012 overall standings: Tina Maze of Slovenia, with 1,254 points. That's a 554-point lead. Again, and for emphasis: Lindsey lost last year, to her friend Maria Riesch of Germany, by three.

There are five races left on the World Cup calendar.

No female racer has reached 2,000. In 2006, Kostelic reached 1,970 points. In 1997, Sweden's Pernilla Wiberg got to 1,960.

On the men's side, Austria's Hermann Maier reached exactly 2,000 points in -- there was a nice symmetry here -- in 2000.

You bet Lindsey has noticed she is within striking distance of 2,000.

In prior seasons, she said in a conference call later Friday with American reporters, 2k had never seemed possible. "Trying to beat the 2,000-point barrier is something extremely significant. This opportunity may never happen in my career again," she said, adding a moment later, "I'm going to fight in every race until the end."

Indeed, she said, that's what this entire season has been about -- seizing focus, opportunity and momentum and not letting go.

She said she was "disappointed" to have lost last year by three, wanted "to come out this season starting strong and keep the momentum going," and "then the problems in my personal life … have made me a little more focused."

Last year, she said, taught her "to seize every opportunity, to put everything on the line," in every race.

Moreover, skiing has been a source of stability and solace. Racing, and in particular this season, has been a complete release from everything else.

She said, "I mean, I have had a lot of difficult times in my life, just with injuries and family issues," a reference to the arc of her entire career. "But, you know, skiing is always the constant in my life and I can always rely on it."

The 2012 overall title is the 15th of Lindsey's career and the third of this season; she had previously clinched the downhill and super-combined.

The giant slalom that Lindsey won Friday? That was the second giant slalom victory of her career, both this season, testament to the men's skis she switched to this year and the ferocious workouts she did last summer after coming up those three points shy last March.

Men's skis are longer and more rigid. To control them, Lindsey had to be in distinctly better shape. The advantage of using those longer, stiffer skis is that they enable Lindsey to ski a straighter line. A straighter line means she can, in essence, go faster. Thus: new success this season in the giant slalom.

The first giant slalom victory kick-started the season -- in the very first race, last October, in Soelden, Austria.

On Friday, in flat light and in bumpy, slushy conditions, Lindsey held a lead of seven-hundredths of a second after the first run. That marked the first time in her career Lindsey had ever held a first-run lead in giant slalom.

"I didn't want to let this opportunity pass me by," she said later. "I knew I could win but I still wanted to risk everything. I knew I had to risk everything."

So she really turned it on, leading at every interval to extend her winning margin to 48-hundredths of a second.

Federica Brignone of Italy, the giant slalom world championships silver medalist, came in second; Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany, who won both GS races last weekend in Ofterschwang, finished third, 1.05 seconds back.

Two other Americans finished in the top-15: 28th birthday girl Julia Mancuso, eighth, Resi Stiegler, continuing her late-season surge, 13th.

"I am thrilled," Lindsey said, excited and breathing hard, in the finish area.

Asked if she was going to be taking time off to celebrate, she said, jokingly, "I wish."

No one wishes. Of course the calendar will turn soon enough to spring. And even all great things have to come to an end.

But there are still five races to go.

A historic 50th for Lindsey Vonn

You wonder whether Lindsey Vonn is so good this season that the point has come whether she has simply imposed her will on everything and everyone around her. She did it again Saturday, winning the historic 50th World Cup victory of her career in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, even though temperatures in the Bavarian Alps were crazy cold and she had to survive a near-crash about halfway down.

Lindsey's winning time, in temperatures of -13 Fahrenheit, so cold that racers had to tape their faces to avoid frostbite, was 1:44.86. She trailed through the early intervals. Yet by the finish she was, again, first, and by almost half a second.

Nadja Kamer of Switzerland finished second, 41-hundredths of a second back. Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein crossed third, 79-hundredths back, for her third World Cup podium finish, all this season.

Last year's overall World Cup winner and a Garmisch local, Maria Höfl-Riesch, Lindsey's good friend and rival, finished fourth, in 1:45.85, 99-hundredths back.

At 27, Lindsey is the youngest woman to reach 50 World Cup victories. Only Annemarie Moser-Pröll of Austria, with 62, and Switzerland's Vreni Scheider, with 55, have more.

Of the three, Lindsey got to 50 the fastest, with just seven years between her first World Cup win and her 50th. It took Moser-Pröll eight years.

Men's racers with 50 or more victories: Ingemar Stenmark (86), Hermann Maier (54), Alberto Tomba (50).

"I mean, when I was a kid I dreamed of winning the Olympic gold medal and I wanted to ski like people like Alberto Tomba did," Lindsey said Saturday night from Garmisch on a conference call with a few American reporters. "But I never dreamed I would have reached the successes they reached in their careers.

"I still have a lot of years of racing in me. I have been at a loss for words all day. It definitely is something I never expected. It takes a lot of hard work to get to this many wins and it is a huge milestone in my career."

The Garmisch downhill, 1.8 miles long, is called the Kandahar. It's a course that, by now in her career, Lindsey knows well -- but, intriguingly, one she had never won.

Last year, they held the world championships on this course, and despite battling the effects of a concussion, Lindsey finished second.

All week, anticipation ran high that Lindsey would get that 50th victory. She had come oh-so-close to 50 last weekend in St. Moritz, Switzerland, winning first a super-combined (48), then a downhill (49) and then, last Sunday, coming in second, behind Höfl-Riesch in another super-combined by a mere three-hundredths of a second.

In Garmisch, there's an American military base essentially at the bottom of the run. During the week, Lindsey and others on the U.S. team had visited with some of the U.S. troops -- so she and the other American racers, as they always do there, had a built-in red, white and blue rooting crew.

Three other Americans finished Saturday in the top 15: Stacey Cook ninth, Laurenne Ross 10th, Julia Mancuso 13th. The U.S. women's team leads the downhill Nations Cup standing race -- over Austria -- by 433 points. Austria leads the overall standings with 3555 points, the Americans second with 2428.

At the second split, Lindsey trailed by 62-hundredths. Then came a bump about halfway down the course that saw Lindsey lose the inside edge of a ski and slide onto a hip and almost out of the race. Almost.

She recovered, found a line and made up time.

The U.S. head coach, Alex Hoedlmoser, who had been standing by the side of the course about 20 meters away from the spot where Lindsey almost went down, said afterward that watching her slip "stopped my heart a little bit."

But, he said, she "pulled it off like nobody else would."

She said, "I definitely gave the coaches a little bit of a scare there."

She also said, "I felt like I was down on my hip and then right back up again," the kind of mistake she has made before and assuredly will make again. "I do make mistakes quite a few times in downhill and super-G. I just have to keep my composure and ski the line I expect at maybe a more aggressive pace -- I have to keep my composure and keep going."

The victory Saturday was Lindsey's ninth -- already -- on the 2011-12 tour. She has won four downhills.

Of her 50 World Cup victories, 25 have been downhills.

Lindsey now has 1350 points for the season, a whopping 482-point lead over Tina Maze of Slovenia. Höfl-Riesch stands third with 746.

Lindsey leads the downhill points tally as well, by 230.

The next event: a super-G, on Sunday, still in Garmisch. Lindsey leads the super-G standings this season, too.

This season, of course, has come amid considerable turmoil in Lindsey's personal life. She split from her husband, Thomas. Lindsey's sister, Laura, was on hand in Garmisch as was her father, Alan Kildow, and stepmom. She said she was glad to be able to share the historic moment with family.

Make no mistake. The time that Lindsey gets on the mountain is, in many ways, sanctuary. When she's up there in that start gate, it just her and her very considerable will, alone.

The best two minutes of her day are coming right up. She couldn't be happier.

"I'm really enjoying skiing," she said in that conference call. "I feel like no matter what going on in my personal life I can put my skis on and go out and have fun.

"Skiing has been honestly the best thing for me in my life at this point. It's hard to describe. Things in the personal front aren't any better than they were a few months ago. I feel very clear-minded when I'm skiing. I enjoy it … it's just a different state of mind."