Lindsey Vonn acknowledged that “I didn’t help myself” through comments she made about Mikaela Shiffrin’s participation at the skiing world championships. Vonn had campaigned to race with Shiffrin in a skiing “dream team” at the world championships for the new combined event, which will also make its Olympic debut next year. When Shiffrin announced on Instagram that she was racing with recently crowned downhill world champion Breezy Johnson, Vonn reacted with displeasure.
“Why am I not surprised?” Vonn wrote on X with a shrug emoji, before deleting her post and adding another. In comments that came out on Monday, Shiffrin said she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following a crash in November and will not defend her gold medal in giant slalom at the world championships. She did say she would race in the slalom and team event though. “Maybe I didn’t help myself or the team by having my Twitter fingers out,” Vonn said on Tuesday. “But at the same time, I’m a human being and I was disappointed in the communication. And I let my feelings be known. I’m a human. I have feelings. So shoot me.”.
The new combined event entails one racer competing in a downhill run and another in a slalom, with the times of the two added together to determine the final results. Vonn placed a distant 21st in the downhill portion, leaving her American teammate AJ Hurt a big gap to make up. Lauren Macuga, another American, led the downhill portion, while Johnson was fourth. “I was in my tuck pretty much the whole way down and just not accelerating anywhere,” said Vonn, who returned to full-time skiing this season at the age of 40 after nearly six years of retirement. “So I have clearly work to do. I think it’s my boots that I have to play with to figure out what’s better … but it’s hard to really change your entire setup while you’re racing in the world championships.”.
The combined pairings were selected by the US team’s coaching staff based on “season-best results” in downhill and slalom. “I didn’t have a problem with the selection process,” Vonn said. “It was 100% the right decision. Breezy and Mikaela should be the pair. They’re the fastest two skiers … my only problem was that it wasn’t communicated to me. I found out about it on Instagram. And I just think it’s a little unprofessional. It’s just a simple phone call or text message. I think that’s not a really difficult thing to ask for.”.
Vonn said she reached out and that Shiffrin agreed she would like the pair to race together. But then Vonn was told that Shiffrin wasn’t entering the combined. Vonn only learned of Shiffrin’s final decision to race in the event on Instagram. “It would have been a cool thing if those two greats would have raced together, but at the moment others are stronger in their performance,” US speed coach Alex Hoedlmoser said. “We had to make sure to bring the fastest pairings together, and it was very obvious that Breezy was the fastest in the downhill and therefore would race with Mikaela.”.
