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OLYMPICS
Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn is feeling strong, fast, ready to race

David Leon Moore
USA TODAY Sports
Lindsey Vonn poses with Leo Vonn in Vail, Colo., on Nov. 18. Lindsey Vonn is planning to return to ski racing at Lake Louise, Alberta, on Dec. 5.

VAIL, Colo.— She's 30 years old now, hasn't won a race in 22 months and faces a potentially prickly lead-dog challenge within the U.S. women's ski team from a rising teen superstar.

But Lindsey Vonn, who missed much of the last two ski seasons after undergoing two major knee surgeries, is surprisingly feisty — and unsurprisingly driven — as she gets ready to resume her record-setting racing career.

As her comeback event — a World Cup downhill in Lake Louise, Alberta, on Dec. 5 — draws near, is she nervous? Is she feeling pressure to show people she is still the fastest woman skier in the world?

"Over the past few years, with my injury and my divorce and who I'm dating, it's just so much more clear to me that it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks," Vonn says in an hour-long interview with USA TODAY Sports in her hometown. "I almost feel like I have much less pressure than I used to. I'm just focused on my own goals and my own skiing and not worried about what anyone else is expecting me to do. That's helped a lot. It gives you a little bit of peace of mind."

Vonn separated from former husband/coach Thomas Vonn in November 2011 and the divorce was final in January 2013. Maybe Vonn was attracted to current boyfriend Tiger Woods because of his over-the-top celebrity, as she appears drawn to the spotlight. Then again, maybe the draw was that he, too, is a driven competitor who was at one time the unquestioned best at his sport.

Vonn feels the competitive juices flowing again as she readies for her season debut at Lake Louise, a venue at which she has won so many races (14) that it is nicknamed "Lake Lindsey."

"I'm ready to race," says Vonn, who is skipping a World Cup giant slalom race in Aspen this week to focus on training for the speed events, two downhill races and one super-G, next week.

"I'm exceptionally strong right now. I think my legs could be stronger, and I'm still working to get them stronger. But I think I'm in a really good place right now. I feel really comfortable. I feel strong. I feel fast."

And she's in it for the long haul.

She wants to ski impressively in Lake Louise, and she wants to be in peak form for the Vail/Beaver Creek World Alpine Ski Championships Feb. 2-15 in her backyard. But she's also thinking long term — the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

ANOTHER SHOT AT THE OLYMPICS

Vonn missed the Sochi Olympics in February, recovering from her second knee surgery. She put on a happy face on appearances on NBC's TODAY Show during the Olympics. But she was anything but cheery.

Lindsey Vonn is coming back from knee surgery after missing the Sochi Olympics in February. She  wants to compete at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

"It was really hard to watch the Olympics," she says. "I kind of watched, but not really. Having raced a World Cup there two years before, I was always thinking what I could have done, what would have happened, what could have happened ... yeah, it was difficult."

Vonn was a star at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, where she became the first U.S. woman to win an Olympic downhill race. Then she went on to cement her place as the most decorated in U.S. skiing history, claiming a fourth overall World Cup title in 2012 and driving her World Cup race win total up to 59, just three shy of the all-time women's record held by Annemarie Moser-Pröell of Austria.

She is striving to reach that top rung again. She hopes to break Moser-Pröell's record this season. The more uncertain but possibly more meaningful prize would be more Olympic medals. She's always said the Olympics was what motivated her the most, and despite her various accolades and triumphs, she has the same number of Olympic gold medals as 19-year-old U.S. teammate Mikaela Shiffrin (one) and fewer overall Olympic medals than longtime teammate Julia Mancuso (two, to Mancuso's four).

"I feel like I need another chance at the Olympics," Vonn says. "The first couple of Olympics, I was getting the kinks out. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was young. Now I feel like I'm in a place where I can excel at big events. I want that opportunity again."

She'll be 33 during the 2018 Olympics but says that isn't too old. She points to former Austrian star Michaela Dorfmeister, who won gold medals in downhill and super-G at the 2006 Winter Olympics, a month before her 33rd birthday.

Former ski racer Steve Porino, a commentator for NBC Sports, points to Vonn's size and skill set and says it is entirely possible for her to win races this year and also in 2018.

"I think her chances in Korea in 2018 are quite good," Porino says. "She's sort of the archetypal physique for the downhill in particular. She's tall, 5 feet 10 inches, and heavier than most of her competitors, and weight matters a lot in the downhill. Plus, she works so hard. This isn't like a Bode Miller who might not take care of his body. Her body has been damaged, like a lot of skiers' bodies. But you know she will do the work. And the fact is, she's just so much better than anyone else in her era."

The USA's new women's speed team coach, Swiss native Stefan Abplanalp, says Vonn can be as good as ever — but perhaps not in her first race back.

"She is physically absolutely ready to push it, but she has to get used to skiing fast again," says Abplanalp, who previously coached Swiss and Norwegian women downhillers. "You have to build up until you are super comfortable. If you are going to push the limit, the limit is always pushing back. You have to be technically ready to handle the fast line."

Looking beyond this month and this season, Abplanalp says, "Lindsey was always strong physically. But now she's even stronger. She's a very experienced athlete. So I'm pretty positive and confident that she has some really good years in front of her. She will still win a lot of races. She can be as successful as before."

MANAGING THE RISK

One of Vonn's toughest competitors of the past, Germany's Maria Höefl-Riesch, was also her best friend on the World Cup tour. But the 29-year-old Höefl-Riesch retired at the end of last season content with a career that included four Olympic medals, three of them gold.

Future competition could come from Shiffrin, who for now is racing only in slalom and giant slalom but is expected to compete in super-G and downhill in coming years.

Vonn says she's ready to risk what it takes to win. How much risk is that? Consider that the last time Vonn won a downhill at Lake Louise, two years ago, she reached a top speed of 83.9 miles per hour.

She might go that fast again. But she also says that, at age 30, with two major crashes in the past two years still in her mind, she's entering a phase of being more cautious.

"I'm going to be better at managing my risk," she says. "If the snow is bad or the light is bad, then I don't train. I think my biggest problem was that after the first surgery, because I was stronger than I had ever been, I thought that it wasn't possible to do the same thing again. But I'm not invincible. I realize that now. So I'm just a little bit more cautious. I wouldn't say I'm afraid. I'm just a little more nervous at times. I'm not scared. I'm more experienced and wiser. I know what can happen and I'm more aware of the risks than I was before. I just don't take them if I don't need to."

Vonn, with extra time on her hands this year because she wasn't able to train as much as usual, hit the celebrity circuit, making television appearances, attending fashion weeks, doing magazine cover photo shoots and traveling with Woods.

Now that she will be back to the grind of the World Cup tour, what will she miss most about that lifestyle?

"It was nice to do different things and go to fashion weeks," she says. "I'm a girl, so I love fashion and stuff like that. But I love skiing above everything else. I'm happy to be back racing the World Cup tour. Would I love to be watching Tiger more? Yes. Would I love to go to more fashion events? Yes. But I love ski racing more."

Next week, she will begin to find out whether ski racing still loves her back.

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