Lindsey Vonn narrowly avoided a crash near the midway point and went on to become just the third woman to reach 50 Audi FIS Alpine World Cup wins in a career with a downhill victory Saturday in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Vonn has 25 of those wins in the downhill. With nine wins this season, the Olympic gold medalist leads the World Cup overall points standings by 482 points.
“Fifty World Cup wins is a huge mark for me in my career and more than I even thought possible,” Vonn said.
Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Proell has the women’s record with 62 wins. Vreni Schneider of Switzerland had 55.
“Lindsey’s near crash happened about 20 meters from me,” U.S. women’s coach Alex Hoedlmoser said. “ ... She came in and dropped the hip a little bit then hit that super bumpy section.
"That little mistake almost ended in a crash, but she pulled it off like nobody else could and didn’t actually lose all that much speed there.”
Julia Mancuso made it a U.S. sweep Sunday when the three-time Olympic medalist won the super-G on a day when tough conditions forced 14 racers off course.
Vonn was among those unable to finish.
“It was very difficult,” Mancuso said. “I couldn’t see much.”
Heather Kearney and Billy Demong are 2010 Olympic Winter Games gold medalists who enjoyed successful weekends.
Kearney won her 14th straight moguls title Saturday in the FIS Freestyle World Cup in Park City, Utah. Heather McPhie was third while Jeremy Cota was fourth among men.
Demong reached a podium for the first time since the Olympic Games when he finished third in the Nordic combined World Cup event in Val Di Fiemme, Italy.
Sarah Hendrickson and Lindsey Van finished second and third in a World Cup women’s ski jumping event Sunday in Hinzenbach, Austria.
WRESTLING
Kendrick Sanders, Coleman Scott and Alyssa Lampe claimed the Outstanding Wrestler awards at the Dave Schultz Memorial International at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
Sanders took the OW for the Greco-Roman competition after pinning Italy’s Tiziano Corriga in the first period of Saturday night’s 66 kg/145.5-pound final. Sanders put Corriga, a 2011 Italian world team member, on his back with a reverse lift.
“I knew I could lift him,” said Sanders, who used the win to land a spot in April’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Iowa City, Iowa. “That’s my go-to move and that’s what I used.
“Once I got him up, I knew it was in my control.”
World champion Dremiel Byers won his sixth Schultz title at 264.5 pounds.
Olympian Spenser Mango (121 pounds), Andrew Bisek (163), Chas Betts (185) helped U.S. wrestlers take five of the seven Greco-Roman titles.
Jordan Burroughs, the reigning world freestyle champion at 163 pounds, won a battle of past world team members and NCAA champions when he defeated Trent Paulson, 1-0, 6-0, in the 163-pound final Friday night.
Scott rallied past Rahul Bala Aware of India, 2-1, 1-3, 3-2, at 132 pounds for his OW award.
Raymond Jordan (185) and Dom Bradley (264.5) also won.
Lampe’s OW came in women’s freestyle, which concluded Thursday.
GYMNASTICS
John Orozco won parallel bars and horizontal bar titles while also performing well in the other four events to capture the all-around title at the Winter Cup Challenge in Las Vegas.
“I’m glad I got to start off like this in a new year,” Orozco said. “Hopefully, I can keep it up throughout the whole year up to the Olympic Trials.”
Orozco carried the lead into Sunday and held it throughout the day.
Steven Legendre and Brandon Wynn finished 2-3 in the all-around.
Orozco beat Danell Leyva on a tiebreaker on the horizontal bar. Legendre won the vault and floor exercise. Wynn won the still rings. Gren Ishino won the pommel horse.
Following the competition, Wynn, David Sender, Paul Ruggeri, Samuel Mikulak, Jesse Silverstein, Ishino and C.J. Maestas were named to the U.S. national team, along with all seven members of the 2011 World Championships team.
Meanwhile, Paul Hamm, the 2004 Olympic all-around champion, struggled in his first meet since tearing his right shoulder. He has only been training for eight months but said he will continue to train for a spot on the U.S. team in London.
SPEEDSKATING
Team USA continued a successful World Cup season with four medals at the Korean Air ISU World Cup in Moscow.
Three of the medals were earned Sunday, including a silver for the women’s relay team of Alyson Dudek, Tamara Frederick, Lana Gehring and Emily Scott. Gehring also had an individual bronze at 1500 meters.
“I’m hoping to straighten up some of my mistakes next weekend and be able to compete even stronger at World Championships in Shanghai,” Gehring said.
J.R. Celski, a bronze medalist in the men’s 1500 in Vancouver, earned a bronze in the same event in Moscow.
John-Henry Krueger, a 16-year-old Word Cup rookie, picked up his first medal with a silver in Saturday’s men’s 1500-meter race.
The tour makes its sixth stop, at Dordrecht, Netherlands, beginning Friday.
Elsewhere, US Speedskating announced its Long Track Junior World Championship team following the U.S. Junior National Long Track Championships and American Cup II in Milwaukee.
The team of Jaclyn Rowe, Andrew Astalos, Jerrica Tandiman, Emily Lehman, Steven Hartman, Luke Tweedale, Chris Anderson, Petra Acker and Hannah Curwin will compete March 2-4 in Obihiro, Japan.
Reigning world champion Simon Cho was penalized and had to settle for fourth place in the 500.
TRACK AND FIELD
Jenn Suhr broke the American indoor women’s pole vault record Saturday night by clearing 16 feet (4.88 meters) in the New Balance Grand Prix, the second stop of USA Track and Field’s Indoor Visa Championship Series, at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston.
Suhr broke her own record one week after failing to clear any height in the U.S. Open, the series opener, which was held in Madison Square Garden in New York. She cleared 15-11 ¼ last season.
After becoming the first American women to clear 16 feet indoors, Suhr took only one attempt at 16-5 ¼ and a world record. She decided not to take the other two attempts because of an Achilles tendon problem.
David Oliver won the men’s 60-meter hurdles in 7.60 seconds.
Maggie Vessey rallied in Lane 1 to edge Erica Moore by four-thousandths of a second in the women’s 800, finishing in 2:02.361.
“I thought there was enough room for me to get by,” Vessey said. “It was hard making moves.
“Outdoors, I have a tendency to move out wide. I was a little surprised I was able to get through.”
Etc.
• Serena Williams and Christina McHale won two singles matches each as the United States shut out Belarus 5-0 in the Federation Cup tennis World Group II first round in Worcester, Mass. Venus Williams and Liezel Huber won in doubles.
• Kayla Harrison, a 2010 world champion, finished second at 78 kg, Marti Malloy was third at 57 kg and Nick Delpopolo was fifth at 73 kg at the Grand Slam judo event in Paris.
• Olympian Tim Burke was sixth in the 12.5K Pursuit Saturday and eighth in the 15K Mass Start Sunday at the International Biathlon Union World Cup event in Oslo, Norway.
• World Cup veterans John Daly and Katie Uhlaender passed up the bobsled and skeleton World Cup event in Whistler, B.C. to pursue Intercontinental Cup skeleton points in two races in Calgary, Alberta. Daly, a 2010 Olympian, followed up Thursday’s win with a second-place finish Friday night. Two-time Olympian Uhlaender finished third and sixth in her two races.
• At the World Cup event in Whistler, rookie bobsled pilots Cory Butner and Nick Cunningham led four-man teams to seventh- and ninth-place finishes Saturday. Cunningham combined with Dallas Robinson for a ninth-place finish Friday in his debut as a two-man driver.
• Emily Sweeney and Kate Hansen finished 1-2 Friday in the Junior World Cup luge event in Oberhof, Germany.
• Fencer Skyla Powers posted her first Junior World Cup victory while leading a 1-2-3 Team USA finish Saturday at the Sunstate Mechanical Junior World Cup at the Arizona Fencers Club in Chandler, Ariz. Margaret McDonald finished second and Adrienne Jarocki was third.
• The Miami (Ohio) University synchronized skating team finished fifth at the French Cup in Rouen, France.
• Stephen Dropkin’s Massachusetts team and Cory Christensen’s Minnesota II team won USA Curling Junior National Championships Saturday in Wisconsin. The teams will represent the United States at the Junior World Championships in Sweden in March.
Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Tom Robinson is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. Material from various news services and press releases from National Governing Bodies was used to compile this report. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.
