Smashing Success

SHE IS among the world's fastest women in getting down a mountain, but there was no fall line in this corridor. Nor was Lindsey Vonn rocking her U.S. ski team racing suit that morning two years ago at Centro Traumatologico Ortopedico in Turin, Italy. � "I was in one of those hospital gowns with my butt hanging out," recalls Vonn, who was single and known by her maiden name, Kildow, at the time. "I was sneaking down the hallway to the elevator, but as soon as the doors opened, these nurses came sprinting around the corner, yelling, 'No, no, no!'" � Later that day Vonn was released from the trauma center, but only after doctors subjected her to a second round of CAT scans. Not that she could blame them. They'd seen footage of her crash the day before on an Olympic training run in San Sicario—a sickening wipeout at 60 mph that sent her rag-dolling down the mountain and earned her a helicopter ride to Turin. Doctors feared she'd broken her back.

Upon seeing the same clip in his Turin apartment, a flu-wracked Thomas Vonn, then Lindsey's boyfriend, had packed their bags. "I thought for sure she'd blown out one knee, most likely two, and had some head and back injuries as well," recalls Thomas, a former Olympic skier himself. "There was no question her Olympics were over."

She raced two days later.

Despite excruciating pain from a pocket of fluid trapped in her back, Lindsey finished eighth in the downhill. Her grit riveted a nation; fans, Olympians and members of the media voted her the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. For a year or so, it was her fate to be best known for a run she never finished. That has changed. Lindsey, 23—and married to Thomas for five months—is on a Tiger-like tear this season. After winning seven races in her first six years on the World Cup circuit, she has won five times since early December.

It should have been six. On Feb. 22 Lindsey made hash of the final turn of Franz's Run, a downhill course at Whistler, B.C., handing the race to Switzerland's Nadia Styger, who won by one hundredth of a second. That runner-up finish clinched the seasonlong World Cup downhill championship, making Lindsey only the second American to win it. ( Picabo Street did so in 1995 and '96.) With six races left Lindsey holds a 54-point lead over Austria's Nicole Hosp for the World Cup overall title, a feat no U.S. woman has pulled off since Tamara McKinney did it a quarter century ago.

In a sport that is essentially predicated on risk, Lindsey is putting together one of the best seasons in U.S. Alpine history by ... going the speed limit. "A lot of the other girls have to push it past the limit—well past—to win," Thomas says. Such is his wife's gift for finding the purest line down the course, "she can come down skiing 90 percent and still win by half a second."

"Lindsey was skiing this fast two years ago," adds her speed coach, Alex Hoedlmoser. "Back then, she felt she had to win races by 1.5 seconds"—a Secretariat-like margin in the downhill. "Sometimes, she did. And sometimes, she would beat it in" (Hoedlmoser's expression for crashing spectacularly).

So she's taking fewer chances, spending less time in hospitals. What else? Hoedlmoser cites her work ethic and ideal body for the sport. She goes 5'10", 160 pounds and, he says, has an "exceptionally aerodynamic" tuck. But there's yet another reason Lindsey is in such a good place. That would be Thomas, who can be found trudging along, schlepping her boots, skis, poles and, on the best days, an oversized cardboard check.

Serving as a sherpa is but one of Thomas's many job descriptions. He's a personal assistant and assertiveness coach. "He wants me to have more of a swagger," she says.

"She's Number 1 in the world and acts, sometimes, as if she just came in 40th in a junior race," Thomas says, rolling his eyes. "And she gets starstruck by anybody." His quick impersonation of her: "Oh, my God, it's Apolo Ohno!"