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Lindsey Vonn can claim a hat-trick of downhill victories in Garmisch-Partenkirchen this weekend in the women’s final World Cup tune-up before the Winter Olympics.
The US ski queen has always fared well in Garmisch, winning the downhill in both 2016 and 2017, to give her a total of seven World Cup victories down the Kandahar course.
The 33-year-old picked up the 40th downhill win of her career in Cortina last month and now has 79 World Cup victories to her credit.
In doing so, she became the oldest winner of a women's World Cup downhill race, but her focus for 2018 is the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, which open next Thursday.
The women's Olympic alpine programme starts with the giant slalom on February 12 and the downhill - the blue-riband event - is on February 21.
Vonn has made no secret that she is craving an Olympic gold in South Korea and wants a good performance when Garmisch hosts back-to-back downhill races this weekend.
She was due to start first in Thursday's training session which was cancelled due to fog with another test run planned for Friday.
Vonn won Olympic downhill gold and super-G bronze in Vancouver, but missed the 2014 Sochi Games after tearing the ACL ligament in her right knee and has said "it's all or nothing in Korea".
Her career stats are all the more impressive given the lengthy list of injuries Vonn has suffered.
She severely fractured her right arm in a training crash in November 2016, having fractured her ankle the previous August.
Vonn is currently ranked fifth in the women's World Cup downhill rankings behind leader Sofia Goggia of Italy.
The World Cup's overall leader Mikaela Shiffrin, a slalom specialist who holds a commanding lead, is sitting Garmisch out to rest before Pyeongchang.
For the first time, Garmisch will host two rounds of downhill races on Saturday, with the top 30 from the first run qualifying for the day's second race, and there will be a conventional downhill race on Sunday.
"Home races are always something very special, and that's why I'm looking forward to the upcoming weekend in Garmisch," said Germany's top racer Viktoria Rebensburg, who was born in nearby Tegernsee, but has never won in Garmisch.
"I expect it to be very tight for the podium places."
(AFP)
