Marcel Hirscher tried to come back and he tore his ACL in training.

That was last year.

This year he tried again and sustained a calf injury and…

Marcel is 36. He’s won the World Cup eight times, more than any other skier.

But Hirscher did not ski downhill.

Mikaela Shiffrin sat out today’s downhill, she’s not skiing downhill this year after her puncture wound in GS at Killington in 2024. But Shiffrin has won in downhill.

There are four events. Slalom is the most technical, with many gates and short turns. Then comes giant slalom, the gates are set wider apart and the turns are much broader and the speed is much faster than it looks. Super-G is downhill with a shorter, more controlled course, more gates, fewer turns than GS, but more than… Downhill… Is close to just letting it go, it’s not completely uncontrolled, it’s not quite pointing your skis downhill and letting it go, but it’s close. And the speed can reach 90 miles an hour.

In the World Cup downhillers are the big kahunas, they take the most risk. Almost none of them are any good in slalom or GS. Males are macho. Women…

You have to know at this level of sport, these people are jocks. Billy Kidd was a relatively slight guy from Stowe, that type can’t win anymore. You’ve got to spend hours in the gym. And the conversation amongst these athletes is not all lovey-dovey…there are put-downs and psychological warfare and bullying and…

You may play the sport at home, but don’t think it’s the same environment.

So… For decades the USA was a relative also-ran.

And then came Bode Miller.

And then came Lindsey Vonn. Previously known as Lindsey Kildow, from Vail via Buck Hill in Minnesota.

Prior to this Americans could win, but not on a sustained basis. Miller and Vonn could hold their own with the Europeans, and whatever respect they got in the U.S. was superseded by the adulation on the continent, where they were true stars.

Now the average American did not know who Lindsey Vonn was until the Vancouver Olympics, where she bitched in advance about her shin and using cheese on it…and this is where I turned on her, I was a big fan before. Why the complaints? Everybody hurts. Truly.

She of course went on to win. Congrats.

But Julia Mancuso won the downhill silver in Vancouver, and the combined too…a combination downhill/slalom event which is just about extinct. Mancuso also won the giant slalom at the Turin Olympics in 2006. And she got another bronze in Sochi in 2014.

But the average American has no idea who she is.

Why?

I’d posit Mancuso is not blond, she’s not glamorous.

As for Shiffrin, I’ve never seen such a verbal skier, willing to tell the truth to boot, she’s the best of all time, man or woman, she’s got a good amount of name recognition in the U.S., but nowhere close to Vonn’s.

But Shiffrin is the best of all time. By far. Her total victory count is 108, when Vonn’s is 84, close to Ingemar Stenmark’s 86, who held the long-standing record recently broken by Shiffrin, who is only 30 and still going.

Now ski racers used to retire early. Especially Americans. But then the Europeans got better in their thirties and many are hanging in there.

Because it’s hard when you retire. But at least you can ski, whereas when you retire from so many sports you can no longer participate in them, like football.

So Lindsey Vonn decides to come back. And all her contemporaries, all the retired greats weigh in, negatively.

But she proves them wrong. She wins. Which was truly astounding. Showing skill, technique, knowledge…they can compete with strength and youth. Her success was amazing. Kudos.

Now most of the stars of yore didn’t think Lindsey could come back and win, but first and foremost they thought she should not come back because of the odds of injury, which affect old bodies more.

And now Vonn is injured. Truly, it was only a matter of when. Because that’s Vonn’s style, to hang it all out there, and you’ve got to hang it all out there to win. Just watch Franjo von Allmen’s victory in yesterday’s men’s downhill. There were men who carved better turns, were technically better, but they didn’t win. Von Allmen took the risk and won.

Now in skiing, the Olympics don’t get much respect, they’re seen as an anomaly, because anybody can win on any given day. It’s the season long World Cup that matters.

But the Olympics are when Americans pay attention.

So Vonn tears her ACL and decides to ski in today’s race anyway. And falls again, her coach, legendary Norwegian competitor Aksel Lund Svindal, says it’s because she favored her right leg, the uninjured one, the one with the artificial knee, that allowed her to make this comeback.

This was foreseeable.

Meanwhile, Breezy Johnson, unknown to most Americans, won the gold medal, which is an unbelievable triumph, to win in downhill not only on a European track, but in the Olympics. Those paying attention knew that Johnson had stepped it up a notch, had been putting down some great results, but her story was eclipsed by that of Vonn. And her victory will be overshadowed by Vonn’s attempted comeback and her failure today.

So is Vonn a hero?

She’s a great skier. And a legendary gym rat. And I respect that. However, there’s more to life than ski racing. At some point you have to pivot into a new lane, which is nearly impossible for most athletes, many do their best to trade on their sports achievements, but…

I guess what I’m saying is Vonn proved us all wrong by coming back and winning, that’s amazing. But we knew how this would end, and it has.

But I wonder why she sucks all the air out of the room, why she gets all the attention, when Shiffrin is in another league and up and comers like Johnson are putting down good results.

Vonn is not warm and fuzzy, far from it. She’s a fierce competitor.

But she’s 5’10” and blond. And in America that seems to count. It’s a trump card that…even Trump focuses on looks, oftentimes first.

You get what you’re born with, you get no choice.

But I wish Mikaela Shiffrin was even more of a household name. She’s Babe Ruth. And her consistency is jaw-dropping. She won seven in a row in the 2016-17 season, and won six in a row from the end of last year to the beginning of this one.

But she’s not blond. She’s attractive, but she does not have model good looks, never mind the height, not that Mikaela is short, I figure that’s got to be the reason.

So Vonn goes into surgery as the most famous American skier of all time. She can trade on that perception for the rest of her life.

But me? I’ve lost my passion for her. She gets my respect, but…