Vonn and Mancuso lead lone training run in Cortina

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy – Winner of the last two downhill races this season, Lindsey Vonn edged her teammate Julia Mancuso by a slim 0.12-second margin to top the first and only downhill training run at Cortina on Thursday. Slovenia’s Tina Maze, who won one of the two downhill races last year in Cortina, finished third at 0.18 seconds off the pace.

“I was charging more than I would normally because we only have one training run, and it’s a little bit different conditions this year,” Vonn told reporters. “So I wanted to really see how it’s going to feel for tomorrow but I still wasn’t very clean in some of the turns.”

All eyes are on Vonn this week as she has three chances to tie and then break Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Proell’s all-time record of 62 World Cup victories. Vonn, who has won a downhill in Cortina d’Ampezzo three times in her career, has 61 World Cup victories under her belt heading into tomorrow’s race.

“The focus is only on my skiing and not on the record,” Vonn admitted. “I will have to fully charge because there are a lot of contenders for the victory.”

“I was a little bit intimated by all the jumps and the air there on the course today,” she added. “But the organizers did an amazing job preparing the hill, it’s phenomenal like always. There is definitely some more terrain because of the lack of snow. It’s a lot more air than normal. But I think it actually runs really well almost better than in past years.”

Racing action starts tomorrow at 9:30 CET with the first downhill of the weekend, which serves as a replacement for the canceled race in Bad Kleinkircheheim.

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