Lindsey Vonn looked too poised and graceful to think she was even going strong. Instead, in her epic return to racing she was among the fastest, in two sectors of the Corviglia di Sankt Moritz. Her superstitious rituals have not changed, there has been no shortage of sighs of tension at the starting gate: she no longer has to prove anything but everyone will always expect something special from her, who smiles with joy for a fourteenth place, one second from the top, after putting half the opponents behind them. A context which, even in the most infinitesimal details, incredibly resembles the last phase of Valentino Rossi's career
Land Regine are kept waiting. Lindsey Vonn she has bib number 31, she is the last to get off Super G in Sankt Moritz which marks his return to the World Cup after six years. In the Engadine it is a Saturday morning struck by the light: not even a cloud in the sky, not a hint of wind, the Corviglia covered in snow which fell in large quantities during the week. It's the perfect day, and it couldn't be otherwise.
Lthe director switches for several moments to the first three on the podium – Huetter, Behrami and Goggia – who are smiling. The graphics summarizing the rankings and gaps of the entire heat are projected onto that still image, as if the race were now over. From the sofa, with a certain nervousness, you whisper: “But how, Lindsey? Come on, it's his day, everyone knows it.”
Ffinally convey its unmistakable silhouette in the foregroundnailed to the gate 47 seconds from the start start. She is very tense: she blows out air at regular intervals, snorts, slurps, contorts her jaw and squints around her eyes. It's always impressive to see a Queen struggling with a moment of vulnerable humanity. But it's only a moment in fact, because Lindsey goes into predator mode, climbing over the turnstile bar with her rackets, tapping them together in a so so which makes the agitation flow into the frozen lake of competitive wickedness. So he stabs the snow with the tips of the sticks, before rotating his hands and wrists around the handle several times, in a rustling sound similar to a cat's purr. It's a ritual, a superstition, something that distinguishes legends when they stop being normal people. Five, four, three, two, one: Lindsey Vonn is back, all true. At 40 years old and with a bionic knee.
IThe first half time is the worst of the daya good half second behind Cornelia Huetter. Everyone is ready with their rifles at the ready: “But who makes them do it? Why get your image dirty like this?”. Lindsey proceeds quietly through the changes of direction of the second sector, the more technical one, where instead records one of the best partials of the Corviglia Super Gjust three cents from the absolute reference. From then on it's all a gentle descent, marked by bumps, in which you have to let go of the skis: he loses a further five tenths in the third split, before signing a fourth split time of excellent workmanship. In the end she was fourteenth, one second from the top. At the finish line the public stands up and produces a noise that melts the snow, because a forty-year-old lady, after six years of inactivity, has put half the field behind her. To the microphones of flowerbed Lindsey will say that this was not the race to look for special effects in, that the important thing was to complete it without taking excessive risks. It remained conservative in some sections, perhaps it will tell too much, but in others it tickled the times of the fastest and this was enough to convince itself and the whole world that returning to the track was a great idea. That there is a fair margin, perhaps unexpected, to have even more fun.
Lindsey came back just for the pleasure of skiing without feeling pain anymore, just to experience those damned pre-race sensations again, which you hate at the moment but which when you retire evoke a strange nostalgia. She would not have returned if she hadn't glimpsed the possibility of producing flashes of absolute competitiveness, yet now she competes with a powerful serenitydaughter of a dualism that unites a very small circle of athletes who have remained active after the age of forty: they no longer have to prove anything, but by virtue of their name everyone always expects something special from them. Can you imagine that even at the age of seventy, Lindsey Vonn can be very fast in the second sector of the Corvigliaa technical section that requires supreme sensitivity, where she passed with disarming fluidity. Composed, graceful, soft, as if she wasn't struggling, as if she were going slowly. Instead she was very quick, and made it look easy. A bit like Valentino Rossi made the final sector of Assen appear obviousone of the most complicated of the entire MotoGP calendar, where number 46 continued to churn out overtaking and very respectable performances even at 42 years of age, despite a vehicle (the Yamaha Petronas) that was below average.
Cso you look back at the superstitious gesture with which Lindsey licks the handle of the poles and you are convinced that it is rather similar to Valentino's gloves who, before crouching next to the motorbike, draw imaginary concentric circles on the soap bars of the suit, at knee height. Think of the beauty of the most imperceptible and apparently insignificant gestures, but which contain an infinite story. Small things that will never change, like Vale and Vonn's smile at the end of a race in which they may have finished fourteenth, but they had fun. It was enough to observe them on the grid and at the starting gate to understand that in them, in those rituals made of caresses, there will always be something different. Something unique.
Related News :