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Commentary: Vonn goes out with a medal

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In the final race of her storied career, Lindsey Vonn captures a bronze in the World Cup downhill.
The temperature: absolutely freezing. The time: barely after sunrise.
The place: the bottom of a training hill in Vail, Colorado, waiting for Lindsey Vonn to finish a few runs to test her surgically repaired knee just before the 2014 Sochi Games – an Olympics she ended up missing because of that troublesome knee.
“Why on Earth would you wait in this?!” an incredulous Vonn asked me as she threw on her parka.
That one needed no answer.
If you’ve waited in the bitter cold, pressed against the fencing waiting for an interview, or, as a fan, planned your entire day around seeing Vonn – even if for just that magical split second when she sped by you on the mountain – then you were not alone. You were lucky. Freezing, perhaps. But lucky.
Because greatness like that doesn’t come along often.
In an unscientific survey of fans, friends, family members and rivals to uncover the perfect word that best captured her, each person answered with a variation of three – a podium of sorts to describe the most winningest female World Cup skier ever.
Resilient.
Stubborn.
Game-changer.
Maybe that’s why she kept going even after every outward and inward sign told her to stop.
At 34 and with her knees simply refusing to cooperate anymore, the 2010 downhill Olympic champion and the four-time overall World Cup title winner pushed out of the start gate for a final time at the world championships Sunday in Sweden. It was vintage Vonn as she roared through the downhill course to earn one last podium spot – a bronze medal that felt like pure gold. Before exiting the stage, she waved to the crowd and took one final bow.
A well-deserved moment over a career filled with crashes and comebacks, celebrations and triumphs, broken bones and broken hearts, red carpets and golden opportunities.
“The compelling nature of Lindsey’s story is not her victories or medals. It is her daring, her willingness to work extraordinarily hard, and her grit,” said her father, Alan Kildow, who moved the family from Minnesota to Colorado to help nurture his daughter’s talent when she was young.

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