Lindsey Vonn’s tears: Second place in the Super-G at the season finale in the American Sun Valley

Special qualities are said to be said to the snow in Sun Valley. It falls drier than elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains, which ensures a changed feeling on the descents, Under the skisas it says in technical terms. Even professional racing drivers always have to get used to the conditions, even the best Europeans like Marco Odermatt have their difficulties. Just how this snow reacts to tears, you didn’t know that until Sunday afternoon in Sun Valley. Until Lindsey drove the most important race of her life.

82 World Cup titles won Vonn in the course of her career, descents, super-GS, giant gate runs, even twice in slalom. She got eight medals at the World Championships, three at the Olympic Games, and with all these triumphs a second place can quickly deteriorate into a waste. For Lindsey Vonn, it was not the first to be the second. Up to this final Super-G of the 2024/25 season, this was true, after the end of which one could watch the second-placed Vonn sitting in the snow of Sun Valley and sobbing tears. Relief, emotion, despite, all of this could be seen in the target area and later at the award ceremony – but above all the realization that all the effort had paid off for this a podium.

One had been able to count on a lot when Vonn announced her comeback at the age of 40 last autumn. The doctors had predicted that her partial prosthesis in the knee joint would endure the loads, but it was also a kind of test run to rush over World Cup slopes with such a damaged knee. It was also to be expected with the fact that Vonn would need time to find their material coordination. In five years of absence, their skis had developed, sometimes they drove with her, although it should actually be the other way around. And it was also clear that her body at this age would not always be up to all challenges from travel and races: Vonn repeatedly caught diseases, especially at the World Cup in Saalbach-Hinterglemm in February, this prevented better results.

The knee, the ski, the trips, all of these were in the end, but in the end there were challenges that Vern had consciously faced with their decision to come back. What she had not expected was the lack of respect for her. Or, even more: How the ski circus wrapped its noses over one of its most famous faces.

One of the most successful athletes in the sport was assumed that their comeback plans were “stupid”

You still have to repeat the statements that made the so -called legends, at the beginning of winter. One of the most successful athletes of the sport was assumed that their comeback plans were “stupid”, and that was only the public part: in the background, many continued to make fun of their return. Especially when it became apparent in January that her continues to happen and the way back to the podium could become more difficult than hoped. Sorry, said Vonn a month ago in the BR program “Blickpunkt Sport”, nobody still has with her. She also had many supporters, such as the former racer Marco Büchel, who sensed sexism because many made fun of Vonn’s comeback, while the return of Marcel Hirscher was accompanied much more positively. But the critical minority was louder – and remained in the memory.

The debates about Vonn had two effects. On the one hand, they demonstrated the extensive envy culture that prevails in skiing, especially when it comes to attention: Vonn got enough, which was not absolutely suitable for everyone. Above all, not those who had always been critical of her and the certain center-of-ending life that she led. Above all, in Vonn from week to week, despite the fact that it now wants to prove it to all.

Maybe the American snow needed under her skis, which she knows better than any other. Or it needed the feeling of the last chance that she offered: Vonn has already announced that after the Olympic Games in the coming year, her career will definitely end – only women in the USA will take place in the coming winter, which is why she played the last home race of her career in Idaho. An Olympic Medal remains the big goal, but Vonn will continue to fight against all resistance. But saying goodbye to her home with the title of the oldest ski racer who ever was on a World Cuppodest was the same as a coronation ceremony that will hardly be increased.

“It was a tough season in which people said I couldn’t be too old, I wasn’t too old anymore,” said Vonn later, when the tears in the snow were already seeped away, she had something triumphant in her voice: “I think I showed it to everyone.”