When Lindsey Vonn crashed during a Colorado training run two weeks ago, most commentators said that she had dashed all hopes of defending her Olympic downhill title at the Sochi Winter Olympics in two months.
To be sure, re-injuring the same right knee she blew out at the World Championships last February does not bode well for it holding up at the Olympics next February. After all, despite having nine months to rehab it after that first injury, her knee was still unable to withstand the stress of competitive downhill skiing. Now she has only nine weeks to rehab it again before the Games begin.
And, lest you think this second injury was not as bad and may not require the kind of surgery that kept her off skis for so many months after the first one, consider this:
Lindsey Vonn is delaying further surgery on her right knee for as long as possible in hopes of skiing at the Sochi Olympics… She is seeing if she can ski without another operation because that would all but end any chance of defending her Olympic downhill title in February.
(ESPN, December 1, 2013)
I submit, however, that Vonn dashed all hopes of defending her title years ago, when she began courting celebrity fame (of the type Kim Kardashian personifies) instead of pursuing more Olympic glory (of the type Michael Phelps personifies).
And let’s face it, as acclaimed as Phelps is, like most Olympians, his fame seems limited to quadrennial fleets of fancy. Yet, even this kind of fame is so addictive that Phelps is already hinting at coming out of retirement to bask in more of it at the 2016 Rio Games.
Vonn seemed fated to similar fleets of fancy … until she pulled a Kimye – not just by dating Tiger Woods, but by branding herself more as a sex symbol than as an Olympic athlete.
The star skier stripped down to a bikini and skimpy work-out gear for a sexy shoot with Red Bulletin magazine shortly before injuring her knee in a second skiing mishap.
(Daily Mail, December 2, 2013)
Except that she has clearly failed to learn from the instructive lesson Track & Field star Lolo Jones provided. For during last year’s Summer Olympics in London, Jones found to her eternal humiliation and regret that this kind of Kardashian branding not only alienated her esprit de corps with female teammates, but also detracted too much from the mental focus necessary to become an Olympic champion.
Recall that Jones was headed for certain gold in the 100m hurdles at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, when she tripped over the 9th hurdle (of 10) and stumbled across the finish line next to last.
No American athlete has enjoyed more pre-Olympic publicity than hurdler Lolo Jones. One could be forgiven for thinking that this has everything to do with [her promotion of] her relatively stunning beauty.
(“London Olympics: Day 11,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 7, 2012)
But far from redeeming herself in London last year, Jones finished fourth. This gave her own USA teammates just cause to publicly scoff at the disconnect between her performance on the track and the media hailing her as the sport’s pin-up girl.
Here’s how this played out for the world to see when an NBC post-race interview with Dawn Harper (who won silver) and Kellie Wells (bronze) turned, inevitably, to Lolo Jones:
INTERVIEWER: You guys kinda hang out together … Is there fighting amongst the team – we’re talking about Lolo Jones if you can’t figure this out – is there an awkward situation or now that it’s over we’ve all just moved on?
WELLS: Well, I think that, on the podium tonight, the three girls that earned their spot and they got their medals and they worked hard and did what they needed to do, prevailed. And that’s all that really needs to be said.
(NBC Sports, August 8, 2012)
To her credit, though, Jones appears so determined to vindicate her celebrity fame with Olympic glory that she has placed herself in contention to join Vonn as a member of the U.S. Olympic team in Sochi, competing in bobsled.
Meanwhile, given all of the media focus on Vonn these days, you’d never know that Julia Mancuso is America’s most decorated female Olympic skier: gold in giant slalom at the 2006 Turin Games; silver (behind Vonn) in downhill and silver in combined at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
What’s more, she was likely to win more medals than any other American skier in Sochi even before Vonn re-injured her knee. Not least because Mancuso spent her off season engaging in more career-enhancing activities, like surfing and free diving, than celebrity-enhancing ones, like following Tiger Woods around golf courses and escorting him to red-carpet events.
Yet:
Being upstaged by Vonn was nothing new to Mancuso, despite her distinction of having the most Olympic hardware in the Alpine events of any American woman.
‘It’s always hard when you’re in a sport where there’s a superstar: It’s always going to be about the superstar,’ Mancuso said. ‘But I never got into the sport for that. I got into it because I loved it.’
(New York Times, November 28, 2013)
Meowww….
Incidentally, for what it’s worth, Mancuso also strikes me as far more attractive and personable. Therefore, I never got the media focus on Vonn – especially when Mancuso was winning more medals.
To her credit, though, I gather that she does not harbor nearly as much resentment towards Vonn as Jones’s teammates clearly harbored towards her.
That said, if Vonn makes it to Sochi and Tiger condescends to follow her up and down the slopes the way she’s been following him around the golf course at Major championships lately, the media focus on her will intensify a thousand times.
I think it was a mistake for him to approve this [‘winning takes care of everything’] ad. Foremost because it suggests that he is possessed of the same arrogance, self-indulgence, and insensitivity that wrecked his marriage … and precipitated professional downfall…
Now we know why his wife refused to take him back. Which makes his new girlfriend, Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, seem like an even bigger fool for love, or an even bigger bitch for (Tiger-orbit) fame, than widely suspected.
(“Tiger No.1 Again! But…,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 27, 2013)
But if Vonn really wants to emulate Kim Kardashian, all she needs to do now is secretly tape herself and Tiger having sex (because he’s far too sensible to consent), and then leak it the way Kim leaked her infamous sex tape. This would guarantee her not only more millions than Kim made, but also more celebrity fame than Kim has achieved.
At which point Tiger, with his less than stellar media persona, would have served his purpose and she could move on to a more suitable, telegenic celebrity partner … like actor Gerard Butler or NFL player Cam Newton or, ironically enough, Kim Kardashian’s ex, NBA player Kris Humphries – who was reportedly in hot pursuit of Vonn before she decided Tiger was a better catch … for now.
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