CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn knows the Olympic downhill course better than anyone.

She’s won a record 12 World Cup races on the Olympia delle Tofane track — split evenly between six downhills and six super-Gs — and has a total of 20 podium results there, stretching back to her very first year on the entire circuit in 2004.

So how did the 41-year-old American standout lose control just 12.5 seconds into her run and crash so spectacularly at the Milan Cortina Winter Games on Sunday?

Here’s what happened and why:

Critical early section

The highlight of the downhill course is the Tofana schuss, a narrow chute between two walls of Dolomite rock where the skiers accelerate to 80 mph (130 kph).

But the real key to the Olympia delle Tofane track comes above the schuss, where there’s a key right turn that includes an uphill stretch. That’s where Vonn went down.

“It’s incredibly reverse banked,” said Kristian Ghedina, the Cortina native and former racer who grew up in a home just below the finish line. “That’s where your speed for the rest of the course gets determined and if you don’t take the right trajectory it makes a huge difference because you end up going uphill.”

Bumped into the air and clipped a gate

Vonn was fighting that reverse bank and trending slightly uphill when she got rocked into the air by a bump, causing her to clip the fourth gate with her right side.

That’s when the real disaster started to unfold.

Vonn tried to twist and regain her balance in mid-air but landed awkwardly with her skis perpendicular to the fall line, ensuring a brutal fall. She tumbled over, got bounced into the air again and landed on her neck area and slid down a ways before coming to a stop in the middle of the course, away from the safety netting but clearly in serious trouble.

“It’s super flat after it so the goal is to be as close to that gate as possible and she really nailed the turn but she was too close to it so she got hooked into it," Norwegian skier Kajsa Vickhoff Lie said of the gate. “But that’s how it is with the Olympics, you really want to be on the limit and she was a little bit over the limit."

While it’s always bumpy in that section, this year the final bump is “more of a kicker,” Lie noted, which is why Vonn got popped up suddenly into the air.

“I watched the video, and probably like anybody else, saw that she went through that panel, that uphill double, and for sure kicked her in the air and there was a pretty significant fall after that,” head U.S. ski coach Paul Kristofic told The Associated Press.

Organizers defend course preparation in section where Vonn crashed

Women's race director Peter Gerdol said the section where Vonn lost control was “not really more different than other years.”

“This is the Cortina downhill and this year we’re talking about the Olympics,” he told AP. "It’s awarding Olympic medals so has to be somehow challenging.

Had attention been paid to controlling the size of that bump?

“Not severely,” Gerdol said. “Because actually today, all the athletes went through quite easily. Lindsey made a mistake and it happens. It can happen in any section of the course. It happened there but it could have been in another.”

Mandatory air bag inflated under Vonn's racing suit

When she came to a stop, Vonn's skis were facing in opposite directions, still attached to her bindings. She then moved her left arm toward her body and was laying there alone and virtually immobile until help arrived after some tense moments. She received care for long minutes before she was airlifted away by helicopter.

The mandatory safety air bag inflated under her racing suit during the crash, supplier Dainese confirmed to The AP. The air bag, which is triggered by a complicated algorithm when racers lose control, may have softened her landing.

It was evident that the air bag had opened, because Vonn’s chest appeared puffed out when she was lying on the snow.

Marco Pastore, who works on the safety system for Dainese, said the air bag deflates after about 20 seconds, so that likely happened while Vonn was lying on the snow after her crash. Eventually, Dainese will try to retrieve a sort of “black box” sensor that could reveal data on the fall.

“She was wearing it when they took her away in the helicopter,” Pastore said. “So we haven’t gotten the data yet.”

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AP Sports Writer Steve Douglas contributed to this report.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — American ski racer Breezy Johnson won the Olympic downhill Sunday with a hard-charging run on a day marred by teammate Lindsey Vonn’s crash that saw her being taken off the mountain in a helicopter.

Johnson was the sixth runner and found speed with a risk-taking trip along the iconic Olympia delle Tofana course on a sunny day in Cortina. She was in the leader’s box when Vonn, the No. 13 racer, cut a corner too close and was spun around before crashing. The race was put on hold for more than 20 minutes.

The 30-year-old Johnson joins Vonn as the only American women to win the Olympic downhill. Johnson finished in 1 minute, 36.10 seconds to hold off Emma Aicher of Germany by just .04 seconds. Italy’s Sofia Goggia, the 2018 Olympic downhill winner and 2022 silver medalist, finished with the bronze.

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Graham contributed from Bormio, Italy.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin isn’t just narrowing her focus for the Milan Cortina Olympics after struggling in Beijing four years ago. She’s cutting her race program in half after two serious crashes since 2022.

The American skiing standout will race only her core events of slalom and giant slalom, plus team combined — which for her is a slalom run, U.S. head coach Paul Kristofic told The Associated Press on Thursday.

That’s compared to the six events she entered in 2022 — when she didn’t finish three races and didn’t win a medal.

Shiffrin entered one World Cup super-G this season at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December and performed well until missing the final gate. She was pleased by that performance but then didn’t race any other super-Gs.

“That (decision) was made quite a while ago, to focus on slalom and GS,” Kristofic said.

Shiffrin won a World Cup super-G at Cortina in 2019 and has won medals in every color in the event at world championships, including a bronze at the 2021 edition in Cortina.

But Shiffrin crashed in downhill at Cortina in January 2024 and then had more injuries after a nasty fall in giant slalom at Killington, Vermont, last season.

Kristofic believes Shiffrin’s more streamlined approach focusing on slalom (the event in which she has won 71 of her record 108 World Cup victories) and giant slalom (22 World Cup victories), will help her “only positively.”

“You can get spread very thin when you’re chasing after multiple disciplines between speed and tech,” Kristofic said. “So often your preparation gets compromised because you need to prioritize one or the other. So ultimately you run out of time to really prepare yourself to 100% be on point in your key disciplines.

“So I think that narrowed focus has helped her stay on point with what she’s trying to get done. And that was certainly the plan coming into these Olympics.”

Shiffrin suffered a deep puncture wound to her abdomen in Killington and only returned to the podium in GS in her final race weekend before these Games less than two weeks ago.

Having struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder from the Killington crash, it’s been a challenge both physically and mentally to regain her status in GS.

“There’s definitely two parts to that,” Kristofic said. “And that just took time and quite a bit of patience and just staying true to a plan and building every time we go out there.”

Lindsey Vonn shows off a brace on her injured left knee

While Shiffrin is not entering Sunday’s downhill, 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn plans to race despite tearing the ACL in her left knee last week.

Vonn posted video on social media of herself working out actively while wearing a large brace.

“I’m sure she’ll have everything dialed in as ready as possible,” Kristofic said. “She’s made it clear she’s going to push and we’ll see how things evolve through the training runs into the race.”

US women have medal chances in every event

Vonn has dominated in downhill this season and Jacqueline Wiles and Breezy Johnson have also been on the podium, as has Paula Moltzan on the tech side with Shiffrin. It all sets up the possibility that the U.S. women could medal in every race at the Olympics.

Even after Vonn’s injury.

“It certainly can still be the case,” Kristofic said. “I think everybody’s well aware that we have that capacity, and not just with one athlete, but with multiple. … We’re in a good spot coming into these games.”

Vonn-Shiffrin combined ‘dream team’ not set yet

Until her injury, Vonn seemed like a lock to pair with Shiffrin in the team combined for a “ skiing dream team.”

Now nobody knows how she will perform.

Not specifically addressing Vonn’s status, Kristofic said the pairings for the four U.S. teams will be made after Sunday’s downhill.

“We definitely wanted to keep the downhill here in Cortina in play for the selection of that team,” he said. “We just need to see how things evolve.”

At worlds last year, the team of Johnson and Shiffrin won gold. So does their history together play a factor in the selection?

“It will be objective performance that will define what our teams look like," Kristofic said. “I know there’s lots of fanfare around how people would like to see it, but in the end my job is to put the best pairings together so we can perform and get a medal and potentially win.”

The slalom rankings are already set, with Shiffrin in the top spot followed by Moltzan, Nina O’Brien and AJ Hurt.

The team combined consists of one skier racing a downhill run and another racing a slalom run and them combining the times together to determine the results.

Is there any discussion with the athletes during the selection process?

“There’s always discussion with athletes,” Kristofic said. “But in the end it’s a coach’s decision.

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics