LINDSEY VONN FAILED to claim a medal in her first event at the Winter Olympics, finishing sixth in the women’s super-G.
Vonn made her Pyeongchang debut on Saturday but she took a back seat to Czech Ester Ledecka, who stunned the field.
Ledecka, 22, posted a time of one minute, 21.11 seconds as the Czech Republic claimed their first medal in the sport, with Austrian defending champion Anna Veith and Liechtenstein’s Tina Weirather completing the podium.
Vonn was 0.38 seconds adrift of the winner in her first Olympic race in eight years.
The 33-year-old came out aggressively and had a clean and near-perfect run — until the very end. On one of the final turns, Vonn lost her balance and almost fell, but was able to recover and finish strong, however it cost her a medal.
Vonn – the first athlete out of the blocks – was clearly frustrated after her race, finishing with a time of 1:21.49. She threw her hands up at the end and said: “I tried.”
The two-time Olympic medallist won bronze in the super-G and gold in the downhill during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, but a knee injury kept her out of competing in Sochi four years ago.
“She (Ledecka) beat me in a training run in Lake Louise and that was surprising, but that was in a training run. This was the Olympics,” she said speaking afterwards.
“It’s definitely shocking. I wish I had as much athleticism as she has that I could just hop from sport to sport and just, like, win everything. But unfortunately, I’m only good at ski racing – and she still beat me.
“I feel like in the Olympics, a lot of weird things happen and it’s not that they [the winners] don’t deserve it, it’s just different.
“There’s a different atmosphere, more pressure on the favourites, more people can jump in there who might not have been there before.”
Vonn will compete in the downhill during Tuesday’s coverage of the Winter Games.
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