Parkite speed skiing legend Lindsey Vonn’s dream season continued on Saturday when she won the Zauchensee, Austria, World Cup downhill race.  The win was Vonn’s second of the season. There have only been four World Cup downhill races thus far.  Vonn was laser-focused at the starting gat e in Zauchensee, which was shortened due to persistent snowfall. She and the field had to navigate both that change and the consistently worsening conditions. Entering the third of four course sectors, Vonn was 0.11 seconds off the leading time, but she raced the fastest third sector by 0.22 seconds, grabbing the win.  Vonn’s fourth sector time in Zauchensee was 0.26 seconds better than the next best in the field, giving her the finish time of 1:06.24, which was 0.37 seconds faster than Norway’s Kajsa Vickoff Lie in second place. Vonn roared with applause as her U.S. teammate Jacqueline Wiles crossed the finish line in third place.  Saturday’s win was the fifth World Cup victory of Vonn’s career in Zauchensee. She last won in a super-G race exactly a decade prior. Saturday also marked the first time since 2018 that two U.S. women found the podium of a downhill World Cup race.  “I felt like I was skiing better in super-G this summer,” Vonn told FIS, the international skiing governing body, about her strong start to the season. “But, when I got to the races in St. Moritz, everything was working really well right from the start.” Vonn added that she’s just looking to keep her confidence and good form going. There are two more women’s speed World Cups left before the Milan Olympics, for which Vonn has already qualified.  Vonn, Wiles and the rest of the speed field will be in Tarvisio, Italy, this week for the next World Cup. In Tarvisio, there will be a downhill race on Saturday and a super-G on Sunday. The Zauchensee super-G, originally scheduled for this past Sunday, was cancelled.  “I knew what it was going to take to win today,” Vonn said about her win in Zauchensee. “It’s a sprint, and I had to give it everything I had. Definitely had to risk a little bit in the line, and I think it paid off.” Vonn used her experience and understanding of her own skiing to her advantage again on Saturday. She said she took an inside line on the turns knowing she had to make up some time from the flatter start of the race and that her strength is in the turns. Vonn had raced the course before from the lower start gate.  “I’m probably one of the few people that’s run downhill from that start,” Vonn said. “The downhill training run was tough. It wasn’t fast. I was really slow. I was almost last because it was so windy, so I really had no reference point except for using my past experience, and I think that’s what really helped a lot.” Vonn will again have her experience on her side in Tarvisio, which hasn’t seen a race since the 2011 season. Vonn won the World Cup super-G race that year and finished in second place in both the downhill and super combined events. Vonn also won the Tarvisio World Cup super-G in 2009.  This week’s Tarvisio World Cup is replacing Cortina d’Ampezzo’s typical stop along the women’s speed circuit, the host site for the Milan Olympics next month. Tarvisio is in the northeastern-most corner of Italy, along the Austrian and Slovenian borders. The post Vonn wins second downhill World Cup downhill race of her season appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less