Rough return as speed queen Vonn battles for winning form
US speed queen Lindsey Vonn conceded it's a daily battle to regain her winning form after trailing home joint-ninth in Saturday's World Cup downhill in Cortina d'Ampezzo, her second race after a two-month knee injury layoff. The 34-year-old American, wearing knee braces, improved on her 15th place in Friday's race in the Italian Dolomites, but remains far from the lightning form that has reaped 82 World Cup wins. "It's a little bit rougher than I expected, but today was a step in the right direction," said Vonn. Her final chance in Cortina where she has won a record 12 times -- six downhill and six Super-G -- will be in Sunday's Super-G for which US teammate Mikaela Shiffrin is the hot favourite. But for Vonn the challenge is how to become competitive as she targets Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark's all-time record of 86 World Cup wins before retiring at Lake Louise next December. "I always hope to win races, but when you come down and you're 0.2sec off the lead it's not really a positive experience," said a disappointed Vonn. "I know it's not going to get better, it's trying to figure out how best to deal with it. "I just have to try and get the swelling out of my knee and keep the muscles going. "It's a pretty extensive process." The former Olympic downhill champion refuses to be discouraged. After Cortina she heads to the World Cup in Garmisch, Germany, where she has won nine times and then on to the world championships in Sweden from February 5. "I still have a lot more races this season, it's taking me a bit longer to be up and running," she continued. "Garmisch is always a good track for me. There's not much I can do, it's mostly figuring out how I can create power on the leg. "Swimming helps, at 9.30 last night I was in the pool by myself. I'm working to put myself in as good a position as I can to win races." Vonn has battled back in the past from broken bones and torn ligaments, but her final season is the most challenging. "I think I have had worse injuries that I have come back from but last year was a tough year. "Right now it's just building my confidence back up and hopefully my knee will be better for the world championship." - 'Feels great' - Ramona Siebenhofer made it two downhill wins in as many days, leading an Austrian 1-2 ahead of Nicole Schmidhofer. Siebenhofer, 27, chalked up just the second World Cup win of her career and finished four hundredths of a second ahead of Schmidhofer, who retains the lead in the World Cup downhill standings. Ilka Stuhec of Slovenia rounded out the placings at 0.51sec. The Slovenian, the 2017 World Cup downhill crystal globe champion, followed up her second place from Friday, as she also recently returned from a knee injury that sidelined her for 20 months. "Not bad I have to say," said Stuhec, who won both the downhill and Super-G in Val Gardena last month. "I'm really satisfied, it wasn't an easy start for me. "I imagined I would be on the podium straight away. It feels great to be here again, to trust myself to ski the way I can." Stuhec will target a tenth World Cup win in Sunday's Super-G, a race she won in Cortina two years ago.
