Lindsey Vonn wins downhill portion of women’s combined event

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Can Lindsey Vonn make it two for two?

The American alpine star, fresh off Wednesday’s win in the Olympic downhill, picked up where she left off Thursday by posting the fastest time in the downhill portion of the super combined.

Vonn, skiing from the No. 18 position, posted a time of 1:24.16, once again knocking teammate Julia Mancuso off the top of the leader board. Mancuso, starting third, had put down the best run, 1:24.96, until Vonn raced down Franz’s Run.

Germany’s Maria Riesch, skiing right after Vonn, knocked Mancuso from second to third and trails Vonn by 0.33, with Mancuso back of Vonn by 0.80.

The times of the morning downhill will be added to an afternoon slalom to determine the champion. Riesch is the top-ranked slalom skier on the World Cup circuit this year, so she could easily make up the difference in the afternoon gate race.

Vonn hasn’t much training in slalom since bruising her left arm in a late-December crash. The gate event will also be a stress test on her bruised right shin, suffered Feb. 2 during training in Austria.

Mancuso has never won a World Cup slalom and has had no results in slalom this year but has six top-10 finishes in her career.

Anja Paerson of Sweden, by the way, made it to the start gate for the combined less than 24 hours after an ugly-looking crash in Wednesday’s downhill. Paerson, who won the last World Cup combined in January at St. Moritz, did not ski very well though and lags 1.41 seconds behind the leader.

-- Chris Dufresne, in Whistler, Canada