Four downhill races. Four podiums.

Two wins.

Could Lindsey Vonn have imagined her Olympic comeback campaign would go like this?

“I mean honestly not in downhill,” she said in an NBC interview after claiming her second win of the season in Zauchensee, Austria. “I felt like I was skiing better in super-G this summer. But when I got to the races in St. Mortiz, the races, everything was working really well right from the start. So, I’m just trying to keep the confidence going and keep that good skiing going.” 

On shortened Kälberloch slope, Vonn channeled her former slalom superiority, hugging the inside line and carving through all 27 gates in a time of 1 minute, 6.24 seconds. Norway’s Kajsa Vickhoff Lie finished 0.37 seconds back while American Jacqueline Wiles snuck onto the podium for just the fourth time ever in third. Snowfall during the week limited athletes to just one training run, where Vonn was 50th.

“The downhill training run was tough. It wasn’t fast. I was really slow. I was almost last because it was so windy,” Vonn said. “So, I really had no reference point except for using my past experience and I think that’s what really helped was knowing where to go and where to push.”

Vonn trailed in the early goings of her 414th World Cup start. The former Ski and Snowboard Club Vail athlete cruised through the first interval with just the eighth-fastest split. She gained speed at every turn, however, and blasted past Lie on the third sector. Her final segment was fastest of all. When the 41-year-old crossed the finish line in first, she didn’t smile, but stoically pumped her fist and held a determined facial expression.

“I knew what it was going to take to win today,” she said. “It’s a sprint and I had to give it everything I had. Definitely had to a risk a little bit in the line and I think it paid off.” 

Vonn encouraged Wiles to send it in her report back to the start house.

“I think that was really helpful to hear,” Wiles told FIS. “When I watched her, I felt like she cut a little bit of the line, and when I saw that she pulled that off really well, I knew that I wanted to try and do that and just charge as hard as possible. If you were outside the line, it was slow, so you really had to nail the line.”

Vonn, who walked away from the sport in 2019 but returned last winter after a successful knee surgery in the spring of 2024, stepped onto the podium in the super-G at World Cup Finals last March. She opened the 2025-2026 season with a downhill win in St. Moritz on Dec. 12 and a runner-up finish the following day. In Val d’Isere, France, she finished third in both the downhill (Dec. 20) and super-G (Dec. 21) before Saturday’s victory. Her worst finish so far this year is a fourth-place in the super-G on Dec. 14. If the eight-time downhill crystal globe champion was showing off her speed in St. Moritz, she proved her technical skills are still sharp — even in adverse conditions — in Zauchensee.

“You know, honestly, I’m not a really good glider and I figured I wasn’t going to be great at the top, but where I excel are the turns,” Vonn stated. “I knew with all the new snow, the outside track was going to be slow.”

Defending downhill world champion Breezy Johnson was seven-tenths off the standard in seventh as fellow American Allison Mollin placed 14th. Keely Cashman was the only other U.S. athlete to score World Cup points in 18th. Haley Cutler, Tricia Mangan and Mary Bocock came through in 45th, 46th and 47th, respectively.

Defending Olympic downhill champion Corinne Suter returned to racing after suffering multiple leg injuries in a training accident last month at Copper Mountain.

“I’m super happy to be back here, to be healthy — my body feels better day by day,” the Swiss skier told FIS after finishing 22nd. “Today was not so easy, also with No. 1, but I tried to do my best.”

With her 84th-career victory, Vonn moved to within two wins of Ingemar Stenmark on the all-time World Cup wins list, which is topped by Mikaela Shiffrin (106). Vonn leads the all-time downhill wins standings with 45. Vonn also held on to the red downhill cup leader’s bib. The four-time Olympian sits atop the list with 340 points, followed by Emma Aicher (211), Laura Pirovano (167) Cornelia Huetter (166) and Sofia Goggia (156). Given her string of early-season successes, Vonn appears to be the favorite heading into the Olympic downhill, which is just 29 days away.

“No one’s expectations are higher than my own, so I try to keep everything in perspective,” she told FIS regarding her growing momentum. “I know I’m going to have a lot of emotion in Cortina — it’s going to be a matter of controlling it.”

The speed weekend in Zauchensee continues with a super-G on Sunday.