Vonn hopes to end USA downhill drought

There have been 16 women's downhill races run at the Winter Olympics and 16 times they have been won by a skier from somewhere other than the United States.

On the first Wednesday of the Vancouver Games, however, the odds favor Lindsey Vonn changing all that.

When it comes to the American alpine ski effort, the spotlight during the first decade of the 21st Century was almost always on Bode Miller. He is a skier who travels to the beat of his own drummer and whose all-or-nothing style has often brought him more of the nothing than the all.

Miller has two Olympic silver medals in his career, both won at Salt Lake City, and has twice been overall World Cup champion. After training on his own for two years, he returned to the American squad this season.

He ranks only 15th in the World Cup coming into the Olympics, however, and the memories are still fresh from his 2006 effort at the Turin Games where he failed to finish two races and was disqualified in another.

Instead of Miller, the American attention is now on the 26-year-old Vonn, who in her third Olympics is looking for her first medal. Her chances for gold in Turin were reduced when she endured a frightening crash in downhill training although she fought through the pain to compete.

Since then, she has been the dominant speed-event skier in the world. Vonn won the overall World Cup title in both 2008 and 2009 and she was well in front again when the alpine season went into its Olympic break after a trip to St. Moritz at the end of January.

There have been 13 so-called speed races run on the World Cup circuit this year -- either a downhill or a super-giant slalom. Vonn has 10 victories -- five of them in downhills and three of them in super-giant slaloms. She has also won two other downhill races that were part of the combined event, in which times from a downhill and two slalom runs are added to determine the winner.

The only downhill race Vonn has not won this season was her last one, at St. Moritz, where she finished fifth. She came back 24 hours later, on the final day of January, to win a super-giant slalom.

"In a way, it was not so bad losing (the downhill)," she said. "I'd rather lose here in St. Moritz and win in Vancouver."

Vonn has won 31 World Cup races in her career, putting her at No. 7 on the winners list. Miller is the lone American ahead of Vonn on the all-time victory list with 32.

Olympic races do not count in the World Cup standings or records. But they certainly count for plenty in the history book. Vonn will have a chance in Vancouver to make her chapter in that book a very impressive one.