Jackie Wiles: downhill fun

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — When she got to the bottom of the run Saturday, after a time that would land her in fourth place in the third training run for Wednesday’s women’s Olympic downhill, Jackie Wiles, the 21-year-old newcomer on the team, found herself ushered along through the pen where the athletes talk to reporters and TV types, and there, hanging out with the press, was, well, Picabo. Some people might be all, like, OMG — that’s Picabo Street, maybe the greatest power and speed skier of all time.

Not Jackie Wiles. She snapped to immediately, of course, because she understood she was in the presence of American ski royalty. But the reason Jackie Wiles is now going to be racing in the downhill, and the reason she is skiing in a way that suggests she very well might throw a huge surprise on Wednesday, is that she was hardly overwhelmed — even though this was the same Picabo Street whose picture she, Jackie Wiles, used to have in her room growing up.

Politely, respectfully, she told Picabo, “I had a picture of you on my wall — obviously,” like of course it would be obvious, adding, “In middle school, when I was little.”

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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.

U.S. Ski Team: on its game

There once was a time when the Europeans scoffed at the U.S. Ski Team. The Americans have the icy low hills back east and the amazing Rocky Mountains, Sierras and Cascades out west, and yet every winter the Americans would roll into the World Cup tour and maybe there would be the occasional breakthrough -- Phil and Steve Mahre in the 1980s, for instance -- but not the sort of consistent, across-the-board dimension that would make the Euros, the Austrians in particular, snap to and say, whoa, the Americans are so for real.

Ladies and gentlemen, that time is now.

Know, too, that the 2014 Sochi Olympics could well be the U.S. Ski Team's moment in the sun, testament to the culture behind its claim to be "best in the world."

Once, that notion seemed so audacious as to be absurd.

Now -- well, at the 2013 alpine world championships, which wrapped up Sunday in Schladming, Austria, the U.S. won more gold medals -- four -- than any other nation.

Ted Ligety won three gold medals, the super-G, super-combined and then his specialty, the giant slalom. Teen Mikaela Shiffrin won the slalom. Julia Mancuso, as ever a big-game racer, took bronze in the super-G.

The U.S. team's performance came even though Lindsey Vonn -- the Vancouver 2010 downhill winner and indisputably the best female skier the United States has ever produced, with four World Cup season titles and 59 World Cup wins -- tore a knee apart in the very first event, the super-G. She has vowed to be back for Sochi.

Further, Bode Miller -- before Ligety, no question the best American male skier of all time -- is taking the year off to give a knee time to heal. Nolan Kasper, who probably would have been a medal contender in the slalom, crashed in December and is out, too.

There are many, many reasons the U.S. team has risen to the top.

Among them: sponsor support; cutting-edge scientific and training methods; the opening of an early-season speed-racing training base in Copper Mountain, Colo.; a winter-time training base in Sölden, Austria, to reduce back-and-forth travel across the Atlantic; summer training in Portillo, Chile, and down under in New Zealand.

It all goes back, however, to culture -- the idea that the Americans not only can but should win and, moreover, that they're all in it together.

This is the notion behind the 85,000-square foot Center for Excellence, the ski team's headquarters in Park City, Utah, that doubles as world-class training center. It's not just the alpine team that works out there. The cross-country team, the freestylers, the Nordic combiners, the guys, the women, the teenagers, the athletes in their 20s and 30s -- everyone.

That was the idea when the place opened in 2009 -- it was where the U.S. Ski Team, all together and altogether, would work out. It's how culture happens.

Skiing is an individual sport. And yet the U.S. Ski Team has bridged the gap. It is, indeed, a team.

You see it now in small but utterly revealing ways.

After her divorce, Vonn found a welcoming home with the women on the U.S. team. There were hugs all around in a conference room in Lake Louise, Canada, when she said, simply, "I want to be your teammate," and from then on -- that's the way it has been.

Last month, the U.S. women were talking -- with admiration -- about Chip White, for 17 years a U.S. team coach, now in charge of the speed team (events such as the downhill).

"If we miss a day of skiing, he is so bummed," Leanne Smith said. "He is just sad and inconsolable and feels like it's his fault. He cares so much. He knows all of us at a personal level and wants to see us to what we are all capable of."

Vonn -- this was before her injury, obviously -- said, "He cut his finger off," with a table saw last fall, "and he was still out on the mountain. He had one hand all taped up and he was still carrying gates around and wrenching in gates and working just as hard as he always does, even though he was in excruciating pain."

Shiffrin and Vonn are now known to paint their fingernails together. Shiffrin is 17, Vonn 28. Vonn was one of Shiffrin's childhood heroes.

Ligety is also 28. It would be so easy for there to be a do-not-cross sign between the men's and women's teams, which travel all winter on different circuits. Instead, here was Shiffrin after her victory Saturday, underscoring the connection:

"Ted was so inspiring these world championships. It's really hard to have a good race every few days and that's what he's done. You get tired and you're trying to extend your mental capacity for an entire two weeks. He seems to have done it flawlessly."

The U.S. Ski Team is, of course, more -- way more -- than just the alpine team.

Even as the posters came down and the bags got packed in Schladming, consider what else was going on that was relegated to the back pages, if that, of America's newspapers -- the stuff that come next February will become front-page news at the Olympics:

At a test event in Sochi, American halfpipe freeskiers Torin Yater-Wallace and Gus Kenworthy went one-two. Seven of the 12 finalists: American.

Also in Sochi, Hannah Kearney -- the 2010 Vancouver champion -- won in moguls with Eliza Outtrim second; Heather McPhie took fourth on a tiebreaker. Six U.S. women made the round-of-16 semifinals. On the men's side, Patrick Deneen took second.

In Davos, Switzerland, at a cross-country World Cup sprint, the final tune-up before the Nordic world championships this week in Val di Fiemme, Italy, five Americans -- three women and two men -- qualified into the heats, with Andy Newell taking his best finish in three seasons, fourth in a classic sprint. He now stands second in the World Cup sprint standings. Kikkan Randall leads the women's sprint standings.

At another World Cup tune-up Sunday before the Nordic worlds, this one at Ljubno, Slovenia, American women ski jumpers finished third, fifth and seventh. Japan's Sara Takanashi won the event and clinched the World Cup title.

Does all this guarantee anything next February in Sochi? No.

Does it, however, mean things are headed in the right direction? For sure.

The U.S. Ski Team won 21 of 37 American medals in Vancouver. In 2010 there were 24 medal opportunities in snowboard and freeskiing; in Sochi, that number will be 48. It's easy to see: the action in Sochi figures to be up in the mountains.

"We had great success in Vancouver and we worked really hard to position ourselves to use that success and that platform to continue to push for another really successful Olympics," Bill Marolt, the president and chief executive officer since 1996 of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., said in a telephone call from Sochi.

"The momentum we are seeing this year is going to be really motivating. The success will focus the athletes and the coaches and I think we'll get a really good effort next summer, with a lot of really good hard work. I think it will go up a notch from what we've done. We'll go in fully prepared, with no stones unturned, and see where we are where it's over."

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.

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, like Tim Tebow, comes through big time

Lindsey Vonn certainly has a sense for the moment. She won the super-G Wednesday at home on the Birds of Prey course in Beaver Creek, Colo. -- her first-ever win on an American course. It was her fourth straight World Cup victory. Pretty much every kid in Vail got the day off of school to watch Lindsey race; she sent them all home happy and, from the looks of it, with an autograph, too.

Beyond which -- just as she was about to hop onto the top step of the podium at the post-race ceremony, Lindsey dropped to a knee with her skis and struck the "Tebow" pose. Why not? When in Colorado, do like everyone else.

As the Associated Press and Denver Post reported, Lindsey -- always respectful -- had asked Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow's brother, Robby, who was at the race, if it would be okay if she won to, um, "Tebow."

The Post reported that she said, "… If I won in Colorado, I would do it. Go Broncos! And I did it. Got to represent."

Lindsey Vonn is the extraordinary American star who leaps out of the sports pages to become a cultural phenomenon. That's all the more remarkable because skiing is hardly the NFL and it takes someone with verve and insight, someone like Vonn, to see the genius in striking the "Tebow" pose before a hometown crowd after winning a race.

For all that, her cross-over appeal is inextricably tied to and rooted in her skiing success. And what she is doing is not only rewriting the history books but revolutionizing the way a female skier approaches alpine racing.

It has been said here before and will be said again -- Lindsey Vonn is the best the United States has ever produced.

That fourth straight win -- Vonn is the first U.S. racer to ever win four straight. Her win gave the U.S. team its third win here in five races. Bode Miller won a downhill Friday; Ted Ligety won a giant slalom Tuesday.

The victory is the 46th of Vonn's World Cup career. That ties her for third on the all-time list with Renate Goetschl of Austria. Vreni Schneider of Switzerland has 55. Austria's Annemarie Moeser-Proell is tops with 62.

She now has 16 career World Cup super-G wins. That's tied for most with Katja Seizinger of Germany for all-time most.

It was Vonn's 14th win in her last 19 World Cup super-Gs. She has never finished lower than third -- and, as the U.S. Ski Team pointed out, third only once.

Of course she leads the overall World Cup standings.

She said she was more nervous Wednesday than she had maybe ever been before any race, feeling the pressure of wanting to come through for her family, friends, community and country. "Anything other than winning would have been a catastrophe and people would have been really disappointed," she allowed afterward.

She didn't get a great start. About halfway down, she almost missed a blind gate. But she kept charging and at the bottom of the course she put the hammer down.

Her time: 1:10:68.

Fabienne Suter of Switzerland finished 37-hundredths of a second behind. Anna Fenninger of Austria took third.

Julia Mancuso finished eighth, Leanne Smith 11th.

Vonn is racing now on men's skis. Every race. The course Wednesday was pretty much -- not quite -- the men's super-G Birds of Prey. She flat-out said "the goal today" was "to really attack," explaining, "I tried to ski like a guy."

That, simply put, is the Lindsey Vonn revolution in women's skiing.

She not only skis on men's skis. She skis like a guy.

As she explained: "I watched the men's race, the super-G here last week, and they're just so dynamic and aggressive, and they really take it down the fall line, and that's what I wanted to try today. I think I did that down the bottom. But I definitely was a little too straight in some parts -- almost missed a couple gates, you know, trying to be too dynamic trying to push the line."

She explained a couple days ago, in Lake Louise, Alberta, where she won two downhills and a super-G, that the balance in skiing means pushing the line between being aggressive and making mistakes.

Vonn, it must be understood, has re-defined the line. She is way more dynamic and way farther out on that line than any other woman in the world.

Can she be beaten? Of course.

Will she be beaten? Surely.

But -- assuming she stays healthy -- will she continue to do what no one else done?

That, too, seems inevitable.

This season promises to be unbelievable ride. It's only December. The season has really just begun.

Leanne Smith's time is now

The women's alpine World Cup tour moves to Beaver Creek, Colo., for a super-G race Wednesday and Lindsey Vonn is your favorite. Obviously. There were three races last weekend in Lake, Louise, Alberta; she won all three. Not only that, she'll be skiing five minutes from where she lives. You've got to like her chances. Julia Mancuso finished third in Sunday's super-G after taking third in Aspen just a few weeks ago. The odds would seem good for Julia, too.

At the same time, this U.S. team is so much more than just Lindsey and Julia, and Leanne Smith's breakthrough is just waiting to happen. You can just sense it.

You can see it in the way the numbers are rolling for her.

In one of the downhill training runs in Lake Louise, she rocked to fifth.

In last Friday's competition downhill in Lake Louise, she was running and gunning at the top of the hill, the celebration gearing up at the bottom and -- bam.

She didn't fall. She ran smack into a huge gust of wind.

In ski racing, as she said, "Variables can be a day stopper."

She also said, recalling the moment, "At the jump, I hit a headwind and I thought, 'Oh, no, I am so hosed here.' That is something that happens. I was definitely bummed out."

She finished 29th.

The next day -- 11th.

"You don't go from skiing really well to not," she said, adding a moment later with a laugh, "You hope you do enough good deeds so that the karma will come get you."

If anyone deserves some good karma, it's Leanne Smith.

For comparison purposes, she finished the 2010 season way back in 75th in the World Cup overall points.

2011: 30th.

Why? Consistency.

Why so much more consistent? She was injury free.

Some detail behind that 30th: She finished the season 15th in super-G, 19th in super-combined, 22nd in downhill. Best, she earned her first trip to the world championships.

This season, she said, "I am the most optimistic I have been any year so far." Without any significant injury, "Last year I had the the best year of my career and got super-consistent. I am skiing better now than I was then. Why not be excited?"

It's reasonable this season to shoot for World Cup podium finishes, she said. To get there means shaving tenths or even hundredths of a second off finish times from last year.

"In your mind," she said, "that's a minimal amount of time to make up and there are things you can do to get there, just a little bit of execution combined with luck and confidence. It's why I really am looking forward to this season and I would love to get some podiums.

"I am happy to show everybody what I can do, and hopefully get up there with Julia and Lindsey and show everybody how good our speed team is. We have a lot of really good speed skiers."

It's why, in Lake Louise, the night before that first downhill, Leanne wasn't the least bit nervous. "That feeling inside me was great," she said.

Now, heading toward Wednesday's super-G in Beaver Creek, "I just know I need to push it more and not over-ski. You just have to know that you are giving it your best and you're not being a sissy.

"If you want to keep up with Lindsey," she said, "you have to push it. I'm excited. I'm excited to be on home turf."

The need for speed

The U.S. Ski Team's speed-training venue, which opens Tuesday at Copper Mountain, Colo., is a one-of-a-kind in the world and underscores the big-picture thinking that has driven the American program's relentless drive to become, truly, best in the world. Once, the Europeans snickered at the notion that the American team could be the best.

No longer -- not with the likes of Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety, Bode Miller and Julia Mancuso leading the way.

All, of course, are first-rate athletes.

"I get the kicks out of this job when I see our athletes do well," said Bill Marolt, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn since 1996. "That's what motivates me."

Marolt is a first-rate executive. He, and his vision, are a big reason why the U.S. Ski Team -- in all its iterations, alpine, freestyle, cross-country, Nordic combined, snowboard -- have been good at doing something that eludes so many others: developing success.

That's why the opening of the Copper Mountain Speed Center is such a jolt.

It's in keeping with other big Marolt ideas.

Like -- the Center of Excellence, the USSA's three-story, 85,000-square foot headquarters building, which opened in 2009 just east of Park City, Utah. It features state-of-the-art training and sports science facilities.

Like -- the agreement the alpine team announced last month that names the Austrian resorts of Soelden and Obergurgl-Hochgurgl, about an hour from Innsbruck, a U.S. Ski Team partner. The three-year deal names the resort the official European training base for the U.S. men's alpine team through 2014.

That is a big deal psychologically. The Americans are basically setting up camp, and in Austria no less -- where alpine skiing rules in the winter.

Even without all of that, it's a huge gain logistically. Instead of flying back to the States for training or R&R, the idea is -- just pop over to Soelden.

"This is my 12th year on the team," said downhill specialist Marco Sullivan. Because of the Soelden option, "This is the first year I'm going to stay in Europe the entire winter."

Marolt said, "We have really worked hard in vesting in and improving what I'm calling infrastructure. Soelden represents part of that. And Copper Mountain becomes part of what becomes the real foundation for this organization, both in the short and in the long term, for our elite athletes now and our developmental athletes down the road."

The Copper Mountain facility addresses the early-season need for speed. It's a 1.7-mile run and fully netted for safety reasons, just like a World Cup run. Starting next year, it's due to be open Nov. 1.

The U.S. team typically spends summers training in Chile and New Zealand. If snow conditions in those locales are good, then Copper Mountain "becomes frosting on the cake," Marolt said. If the summer season isn't so good, then Copper offers the U.S. team "unbelievable training and world-class snow," with 87 new automatic snowmakers.

A project like this takes time (all in, about 10 years) and money ($4.5 million, all privately raised, money that won't affect USSA's annual budget). Marolt said. "This is a facility that at the end of the day -- it's a game-changer."

Leanne Smith, in her fifth year on the U.S. team, said, "As racers, you want to get great at your craft. It's lap after lap after lap. This new hill is awesome.

"I'm looking out my window at it right now. We are extremely fortunate to have it. You know," she said, "no one else in the world has it."