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Far away from the comforts of home, namely at the La Thuile resort in Italy this weekend, American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn created a little bit of history on Saturday in winning her 8th Downhill World Cup title and a record-breaking 20th World Cup globe in all events.
With this win, Vonn now holds a commanding 43-point lead over second-placed Lara Gut for the Overall World Cup title.
In an era where dominance in a particular sport or discipline is typically celebrated and talked about widely by the American sports media establishment, Vonn’s run of excellence since 2008 has flown under the radar for the most part.
Surpassing Annemarie Moser-Pröll‘s wins record in January of last year, Vonn has not looked back and continues to pile on the appearances at the top of the podium, racking up 4 more wins in the 2014-2015 season and already with 9 victories at the midpoint of the 2015-2016 season.
Remarkably, just 11 more wins will see Vonn establish the new standard for World Cup victories at 87 wins – and who knows how many more. The current holder of the record? None other than the Swede Jan Ingemar Stenmark, regarded by most as the greatest slalom skier of all-time.
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This run of dominance is unprecedented at this level, and followers of the sports are watching sustained excellence the likes of which come along rarely.
And yet, Vonn is most likely remembered by the American public for one of 3 things:
- Being Tiger Woods’ former girlfriend,
- Photo spreads in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and
- 4 DNFs (Did Not Finish) and just one gold medal in 12 Olympic events thus far in her career.
To be fair, Vonn is blessed with good looks and does not shy away from the opportunities presented to her by virtue of her physical beauty.
However, it also seems unjust that most of her exploits on the slopes remain confined to brief mentions at the end of sportscasts or along the bottom ticker on sports stations.
More than being unjust, is Vonn’s status as a lower-tier sports celebrity in this country an indictment of a Stateside apathy or worse yet – an indictment of yet another case of sports sexism – towards her record-breaking efforts?
Bursting onto the scene with the Downhill and Overall title in 2008, Vonn owned the field in 2009, winning the Overall, Downhill, and Super-G titles while finishing no lower than 8th across all the Overall disciplines including the slaloms – traditionally her weakest events.
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2010? Three event titles and a third consecutive Overall title, a feat she repeated in 2012. In fact, but for the cancellation of the final slalom run in 2011, which ensured Maria Höfl-Riesch the Overall title, Vonn could have won four titles three years in a row.
Millions of Americans wake up at odd hours of the morning across the country to take in soccer action in Europe, so the excuse that Vonn’s events take place too far away to sustain an interest in does not hold water.
While the popularity of traditional Alpine events is going down in America, with interest typically surging around the Winter Olympics, there is also a case to be made that the sheer lack of media coverage has hurt the sport and its athletes.
Besides Vonn, Ted Ligety and Mikaela Shiffrin have also won World Cup globes since the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Congratulations if you knew that, because you would be among the minority of American sports fans.
And why have we not heard or celebrated Vonn, Ligety, Shiffrin, and World Championship medalists Travis Ganong and Julia Mancuso more?
When stars of the sport like Vonn toil in relative anonymity, and others like four-time Olympic medalist Mancuso and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association resort to crowdfunding for the purposes of paying for surgery stemming from injuries sustained in the sport and to simply be able to afford an Olympics appearance, something seems terribly misplaced in the hierarchy of American sports priorities.
As a celebrity-obsessed culture, we have seemed perfectly comfortable in talking about Vonn as she was seen in the galleries following Tiger whenever their schedules permitted.
Talking about her appearances while covered in body paint for Sports Illustrated has also not been in short supply.
Meanwhile, her road to becoming one of the all-time greatest skiers in the history of Alpine events has quietly gone unnoticed.
Wake up, America!
Moser-Pröll last competed in 1980. Stenmark in 1989. Simply put, the level of Vonn’s skiing has not been seen in almost a generation, and seems unlikely to be seen again for a while.
By the time Vonn skis past the finish line for the very last time, she will have earned her right to be talked about not only alongside names like Janica Kostelic, Hermann Maier, Marc Girardelli, and Pirmin Zurbriggen, but surpassing them in breadth of achievement.
The Women’s World Cup-winning team was honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City (a first for women), and Serena Williams was recently crowned SI’s Sportsperson of the Year for 2015, both deservedly so.
Don’t we owe Lindsey Vonn a bit more, both as a female and as an athlete?
Let us know your thoughts in the Comments section, or via social media.