With training canceled, Vonn enjoys chance to heal

WHISTLER, British Columbia (AP) — Warm, wet weather is turning this mountain into a mushy mess, wiping out training runs and postponing the opening women’s Alpine race.

Hardly ideal conditions at any competition, let alone the Winter Olympics, right? Try telling that to Lindsey Vonn. She loves the way things are going. Every delay provides extra time for her badly bruised right shin to rest and heal.

“I’m lucking out pretty heavily because of all the cancellations,” the American said Friday. “Normally I would be disappointed. But for my shin, I think, this is the best possible scenario.”

The first women’s event, Sunday’s super-combined, was put off because racers will not have had a chance to train on the downhill course. Thursday’s training run was scrapped after two racers started, and practice was canceled altogether for Friday and today.

Much was unknown, including when the women will train and when the super-combined will be raced.

Such schedule disruptions might distress plenty of people — from athletes to spectators, from Olympic and skiing officials to TV types — but certainly not Vonn.

The two-time overall World Cup champion has been pegged as a medal contender in all five Alpine events, and an overwhelming favorite for golds in the downhill and super-G.

But that was before Vonn revealed Wednesday that she was hurt last week in pre-Olympic practice. She fell during a slalom training run and slammed her right boot against her leg.

For a week or so, it was a struggle simply to put on her ski boot and stand still in it — forget about trying to speed down a slope — and Vonn raised the possibility that she might not be able to compete at all.

After taking “a bunch” of painkillers and rubbing Novocaine-like cream on the shin Thursday morning, Vonn did ski for the first time since getting hurt Feb. 2, albeit only in a free run and not on the official course. That was enough, however, to convince her she was ready to take part in full-fledged training.

Then again, as much as she would like to get a true sense of where things stand with the injury by skiing all-out, Vonn figures the best possible medicine at this point is staying off that shin.

“This helps us, for sure,” said Thomas Vonn, who serves as a coach and adviser to his wife.

He said her leg is “definitely getting better each day.”

For her part, Lindsey Vonn wrote on her Facebook page that she took it as a positive sign that her shin felt about the same Friday as it did Thursday, “because I skied pretty hard on it yesterday testing it out. It could easily have gotten worse and it didn’t.”