Lindsey Vonn announces 2018/19 season will be her last
Oct 12, 2018·Alpine Skiing
The winningest female in alpine skiing history announced on Thursday that the 2018/19 season will be her last winter of competition on the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup tour. Lindsey Vonn is in hot pursuit of Ingemar Stenmark’s all-time World Cup win record of 86 set in 1989, but she will retire at the end of the upcoming winter whether she can pass him or not.
With 82 World Cup victories, Vonn sits just four wins shy of tying Stenmark and five wins away from claiming the title outright by herself. She won five World Cup races in the 2017/18 season despite battling injuries throughout her career and sustaining another hard crash at Lake Louise in 2017.
“If I get it [the record], that would be a dream come true,” Vonn told NBC Sports writer Nick Zaccardi ahead of a speaking event for Chase Ink in Manhattan. “If I don’t, I think I’ve had an incredibly successful career no matter what. I’m still the all-time winningest female skier.”
Vonn plans to race every downhill and super-G in the approaching season until she breaks the record. Unlike in past years when she also entered selective giant slalom and slalom races (having started at the season opener in Sölden last October), she will focus solely on the speed disciplines. Therefore, her finale season debut will be at the Lake Louise speed openers in Canada.
She originally hoped to continue her professional athletic career until she broke Stenmark’s record regardless of how many more years it took. “Physically, I’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t make sense,” Vonn told Zaccardi. “I really would like to be active when I’m older, so I have to look to the future and not just be so focused on what’s in front of me.”
Her first shot at win number 83 will be at the Audi FIS Alpine Ladies' Lake Louise downhill on 30 November.
Watch Lindsey Vonn ski to her 82nd World Cup victory below:
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