US Skiers Destroy Competition!

No she isn’t falling- she’s going 80 miles an hour and killing the rest of her World Cup competitors!  Lindsey Vonn is simply crushing her opponents, winning four straight World Cup gold medals- some races by 40-50 meters.  So are the rest of her teammates, both men and women.  It’s a great sports story most Americans will never hear: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082591817947110.html?grcc=970366a9b0cb9e683e53b75a94c13dfaZ3&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_sports

Eleven years ago, I spent a week at Portillo, Chile in August, watching the US and Austrian mens downhill teams training.  The Austrians were so arrogant. (Hermann Meier, their bull-like superstar, pretended to be someone else when I asked him to autograph my helmet).  The young American team I rode up on chairlifts and lifted weights with complained that downhill skiing was no longer cool anymore (all their friends snowboarded) and it was like no-one seemed to care about what they were doing. And they were getting smoked in their training runs by their Austrian “older brothers”. 

Eight years later, it’s the Austrians who are praising (and losing to) them.  One of them said, “We see them as super-cool because they are having so much fun.  With the Americans, it comes from the heart”.  Too bad we’re distracted by all the televised spectacles and superstar egos. Our skiers are amazing…