American skier Lindsey Vonn fought through adversity and injury to tie Annemarie Moser-Proell’s 35-year-old record of 62 World Cup wins winning the downhill in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italevent on Sunday. Vonn clocked a time of 1 minute, 39.61 seconds down the Olympia delle Tofane course to finish 0.32 ahead of Elisabeth Goergl of Austria.
Vonn was on track to smash the record two years ago before she crashed at the world championships and tore up her right knee, requiring serious surgery.
Vonn can break Moser-Proell’s record in a super-G scheduled for Monday.
“The last two years have been pretty tough and a lot of people counted me out and thought I would never reach this record,” Vonn said. “A lot of people thought that I would never win again. I never stopped believing in myself and I think I proved everyone wrong.”
“I think 62 is more important to me,” Vonn said. “Now I feel like from here on out I’m already tied for No. 1. So I’m just going to try to continue to win races and I’m skiing for another three years so there’s a lot of racing left in me and I’ll just keep on doing my best.”