Lindsey Vonn Wins Olympic Gold Medal in Women's Downhill, Julia Mancuso Wins Silver

Lindsey Vonn won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics women's downhill on Wednesday. Lindsey Vonn is now a gold medal athlete, and came through on all the hype that had followed her into the 2010 Winter Games. Vonn had been the favorite to win the gold medal, but a recent injury, coupled with all of the delays on the course made it anyone's race on Wednesday. Vonn quickly reminded the world that it was her race, and won the women's Olympic downhill by a wide margin. Now Lindsey Vonn is a gold medal athlete, and could possibly make this a Winter Games to remember with four events left on her schedule in Vancouver.

It was a great day for United States skiers in the women's downhill, as it wasn't just Lindsey Vonn that walked away with a medal. Julia Mancuso came in second in the downhill to win a silver medal for herself, and completely crush the rest of the downhill field. It was an extremely impressive showing for the American women in this race, and it brought a great end to all of the speculation that had led up to this race taking place. To put in perspective how much these two ladies won the event by, third place finisher Elisabeth Goergl finished almost a full second behind Mancuso and almost one and a half seconds behind Vonn.

Typically these times go down to hundredths of a second, but that digit wasn't needed to decide the top two spots. Explaining it further, the difference between third and fourth place was just .03 seconds, showing just how far these American women were ahead of the competition on Wednesday. Lindsey Vonn was still supposed to win this event, as she is the two-time defending World Cup champion and the best downhill women's skater in the world. The questions weren't about her talent, but whether a rough course and her injury would take their toll on Vonn. Now Vonn will forever be known as gold medal athlete Lindsey Vonn, who now looks to add multiple medals during the rest of these games.

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Olympics_Medal_Count

Olympics_Schedule

Downhill Times