CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy—A week after rupturing the ACL in her left knee, Lindsey Vonn opened her chase for Olympic gold at the age of 41 with an aggressive and successful downhill training run on Friday — two days before the race.
Vonn got tight with her line midway down and only narrowly cleared a gate but she led at the final checkpoints, then stood up out of her tuck before the finish and placed 11th as skiers got their first official turns on the Olympia delle Tofane course ahead of the big race.
“She was smart. She didn’t go all in,” said Aksel Lund Svindal, a former Olympic downhill champion from Norway and now one of Vonn’s personal coaches. “She made a mistake on the bottom, but the rest looked like just good skiing, but no big risk. And to me it looked symmetrical.”…