From the Washington Post:
Forget the deep shin bruise. That was just pain, something to fret about during the endless days of baking banana bread and waiting for the skies over Whistler to clear.
On Wednesday, American Lindsey Vonn overcame a much bigger obstacle -- almost overwhelming expectations -- to win the glamorous and at times treacherous Olympic downhill at the Whistler Creekside resort.
It's hard for the pressure to hang on when you're careening down the side of a mountain at speeds approaching 70 mph in 1 minute 44.19 seconds. When she reached the bottom, Vonn lay on her back in the snow and raised both fists in the air.
"I can't stop crying," said Vonn, whose victory was the first by an American woman in the event. "This is everything I ever wanted and hoped for. I had a lot of ups and downs in my career. Standing here today at the finish and to win is amazing."
Just as amazing was teammate Julia Mancuso's surprising silver medal. Americans have finished 1-2 in an Olympic Alpine event just three times, the last in Sarajevo in 1984, just weeks before Mancuso was born. The duo crushed the field -- Vonn won by nearly half a second, and Mancuso beat bronze medalist Elisabeth Goergl of Austria by nearly a second.
Congrats, Lindsey and Julia!
This has been a very sweet day for Team USA.
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