SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM – Lindsey Vonn acknowledged that “I didn’t assist myself” by firing again on social media after studying that she wasn’t paired with Mikaela Shiffin for Tuesday’s crew mixed race on the snowboarding world championships.
The 40-year-old Vonn had campaigned to race with Shiffrin in a snowboarding “dream crew” for the brand new occasion, which can even make its Olympic debut subsequent yr.
When Vonn noticed Shiffrin announce on Instagram that she was racing with recently-crowned downhill world champion Breezy Johnson, Vonn reacted with displeasure on X, previously generally known as Twitter.
“Why am I not shocked?” Vonn wrote Monday on X with a shrug emoji, earlier than deleting her publish and including one other.
“Perhaps I didn’t assist myself or the crew by having my Twitter fingers out,” Vonn mentioned Tuesday. “However on the similar time, I’m a human being and I used to be upset within the communication. And I let my emotions be recognized. I’m a human. I’ve emotions. So shoot me.”
The brand new mixed occasion entails one racer competing in a downhill run and one other in a slalom, with the occasions of the 2 added collectively to find out the ultimate outcomes.
Vonn positioned a distant twenty first within the downhill portion, leaving her American teammate AJ Damage an enormous hole to make up.
Lauren Macuga, one other American, led the downhill portion, whereas Johnson was fourth.
Vonn positioned one place above Andorra’s Cande Moreno in a subject of 26 starters — 2.51 seconds behind Macuga
“I used to be in my tuck just about the entire approach down and simply not accelerating wherever,” mentioned Vonn, who returned this season after almost six years of retirement. “So I’ve clearly work to do. I feel it’s my boots that I’ve to play with to determine what’s higher … nevertheless it’s laborious to actually change your total setup when you’re racing on the planet championships.”
The mixed pairings had been chosen by the U.S. crew’s teaching employees based mostly on “season-best outcomes” in downhill and slalom.
“I didn’t have an issue with the choice course of,” Vonn mentioned. “It was 100% the proper resolution. Breezy and Mikaela ought to be the pair.
“They’re the quickest two skiers … my solely downside was that it wasn’t communicated to me. I came upon about it on Instagram. And I simply assume it’s a little bit unprofessional. It’s only a easy telephone name or textual content message. I feel that’s not a very tough factor to ask for.”
Vonn mentioned she reached out and that Shiffrin agreed it could be nice to race collectively. However then Vonn was advised that Shiffrin wasn’t getting into the mixed. Vonn solely discovered of Shiffrin’s last resolution to race it through Instagram.
“It will have been a cool factor if these two greats would have raced collectively, however in the meanwhile others are stronger of their efficiency,” U.S. velocity coach Alex Hoedlmoser mentioned. “We had to verify to convey the quickest pairings collectively, and it was very apparent that Breezy was the quickest within the downhill and subsequently would race with Mikaela.”
___
Related Press author Eric Willemsen in Vienna contributed to this report.
___
AP snowboarding: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
Copyright 2025 The Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.