The mood in Lindsey Vonn’s camp leading up to the Milan Cortina Olympics has taken a turn. Where before there was only excitement, now there are nerves.
The mood in Lindsey Vonn’s camp leading up to the Milan Cortina Olympics has taken a turn. Where before there was only excitement, now there are nerves.
“Things changed a little bit this week,” Martina Sailer, the daughter of Vonn’s childhood coach and mentor Erich Sailer and a longtime family friend, said with a nervous chuckle during a phone interview this week with The Post.
It’s only natural after the 41-year-old, who is in the middle of an Olympic comeback that has captivated the world, completely ruptured her ACL in her left knee during her final downhill tune-up on Jan. 30 and had to be airlifted off the course in Crans-Montana. The three-time Olympic medalist’s status for the Games was immediately thrown into question.
Yet, Vonn didn’t let up and successfully completed her first training run Friday with a time of 1:40.33 — 1.39 seconds off the lead in 11th place.
“Imagine taking a car down a mountain but with no road and at 80 miles per hour. You couldn’t do it,” Tony Olin, close family friend and Vonn’s former private coach at Buck Hill in Minnesota, told The Post this week over the phone. “And that’s what you’re doing with your body, and she knows that.”
After the crash, Sailer messaged the star alpine skier, whom she has known since Vonn’s birth, writing she was thinking of her. Vonn has her “head down,” Sailer said, focusing solely on her goal of winning as Sunday’s women’s downhill final inches closer.
“She’s been laser-focused on the goal for a while now,” said Sailer, who is traveling to Milan with her husband, two daughters, and Vonn’s aunt.
