Lindsey Vonn says her comeback is nearly complete

VAIL, Colo. -- Lindsey Vonn says she isn’t just ready to race again, she’s ready to win again.

The star of the U.S. Ski Team said Friday she is way ahead of schedule in her rehabilitation less than a year after suffering a severe knee injury at the World Championships in Schmalding, Austria.

Vonn tore ACL and MCL ligaments in her right knee last February as well as sustaining a tibial plateau fracture. She said her first post-surgery win might come later this month at a World Cup event in Beaver Creek near here. The races will include a downhill, super-G and giant slalom.

“My downhill is definitely not where I am on super-G,” Vonn said after a Friday morning downhill training session. “My super-G is some of the best super-G I’ve skied.”

So Vonn is saying she can win right now in that event?

“Yes,” she said, I’m saying that.”

Vonn, the defending Olympic downhill champion, is already the greatest female skier in U.S. Alpine history and needs only four World Cup wins to surpass Austria’s Annmarie Moser-Proll’s World Cup record of 62.

The men’s record is 86 wins, held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark.

Vonn, 29, said there’s a chance she could catch Stenmark.

“It’s possible, statistically,” she said, “but it’s not my goal right now.”

Her goal right now is to use the World Cup circuit as a building block to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

Vonn said winning gold at the Games in Vancouver, Canada, four years ago was an enormous relief.

“I don’t feel the pressure anymore,” she said. “There obviously is pressure, but it’s more the pressure I put on myself.”

Vonn said her rehab from the knee injury was difficult.

“The low point was six weeks on crutches,” she said. “You’re so helpless.”

Vonn also said she was “surprised how far I’ve come, that I am so far ahead of schedule, but I was hoping for this.”

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