Well Done, Lindsey Vonn!

Sharing 1st place for number of World Cup wins since yesterday.

The Alpine World Cup skiing season is only on for a few months each year. With our new reality of global warming, the season might even become shorter. To prove a point, this season, a few races have had to be cancelled or delayed for lack of snow. Yes, lack of snow!

Lindsey Vonn as of yesterday has won 62 World Cup races. A genius on skis. Wow. Bob and I have only been ardent alpine skiing fans since we moved to Austria. Let's face it, in South Africa hardly anyone even knows what it is to ski on snow. Fair enough, in Austria hardly anyone knows about the game of rugby.

Isn't it the same as American Football was one comment from a colleague in Bob's volunteer fire brigade

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Should a famous rugby player read this, I can only say that should you want a divine holiday without being recognized...come here. Vice versa is true too, I suppose?

Strange how geography determines sports conversations. Bob's father and brother routinely ask him whether he had seen the brilliant tackling / kicking / scrumming etc of a recent rugby game. Sorry to say, Bob's out of the loop and actually is quite fond of the skiing league. As rugby has Percy Montgomery, football has Schweinsteiger, so Alpine skiing has Anna Fenninger. Sorry, but that is the only gal Bob is fond of watching as she bullets down a slope.

It turns out that in our village Bob is not the only one...all the men are ardent Anna Fenninger supporters. She is Austrian and rather pretty, which might be the determining factor for these guys...

But, back to Lindsey Vonn. One of her disciplines is the Down Hill race. For those not aware of skiing, it is a race down an often icy and extremely steep hill, with skis that are waxed to perfection at speeds of over 100 kph. Definitely not for the faint of heart. A couple of years ago, Lindsey had a terrible fall while in a Down Hill race and injured her knee so badly that she was out of skiing for a few seasons.

A comeback sounds so cliche. Imagine having to ski down a slope at such a high speed and remembering the terrible fall you had there before? It takes a courage, strength and determination to overcome this and Lindsey Vonn has not only overcome this fear, but she is skiing so well
( with all the risks it includes ) that she is winning races again.

A true champion like this is very rare. It is a treat to watch her skiing and I am certain that she will easily set a new record for the number of World cup wins, that maybe only her fellow American, Mikaela Shiffrin might be able to get close to.

Congratulations Lindsey!

Biggi

Update: After writing this blog story, there was another alpine ski race a few hours later. Can you believe it, Lindsey Vonn won it too. She has now 63 wins and is the all time world cup wins record holder. Congratulations to Lindsey Vonn.