Alpine skiing-Vonn fastest in training for season’s first downhill

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ST MORITZ, Switzerland, Dec 10 (Reuters) – American great Lindsey Vonn, building towards an Olympic comeback at the age of 41, was fastest in training for the first women’s downhill of the Alpine skiing World Cup season on Wednesday.

Vonn, the 2010 Olympic downhill champion and a four-times overall World Cup champion with 82 wins, set a time of one minute, 30.95 seconds down the Corviglia piste in the Swiss resort of St Moritz.

Norway’s reigning Olympic downhill champion Kajsa Vickhoff Lie was second and 0.59 slower with Italian Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic downhill champion, third equal with France’s Laura Gauche.

The resort hosts downhills on Friday and Saturday with a Super-G on Sunday.

Training times are an indication of form but mainly a chance for competitors to read the course and conditions and set up their equipment. Skiers often ease up before the finish.

Vonn has form in St Moritz, however, as a five-times winner there, with the last victory 10 years ago.

Last year she returned to the World Cup circuit for the first time in nearly six years, and after successful knee surgery, with a 14th place finish in a super-G in St Moritz.

The American has spoken of her confidence in the build-up to a campaign aimed at the Winter Olympic podium next February in Milano-Cortina.

If she qualifies, Vonn has a chance to become the oldest woman to medal in Olympic Alpine skiing.

“I’ve done it before. If there’s anything I know how to do, it’s skiing,” the three times Olympic medallist told www.olympics.com.

“I may be totally clueless at everything else, but if there’s one thing I can be confident in, it’s that I know how to ski race.”

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Christian Radnedge)