Lindsey Vonn acknowledged that “I didn’t assist myself” via feedback she made about Mikaela Shiffrin’s participation on the snowboarding world championships.
Vonn had campaigned to race with Shiffrin in a snowboarding “dream crew” on the world championships for the brand new mixed occasion, which can even make its Olympic debut subsequent yr. When Shiffrin introduced on Instagram that she was racing with lately topped downhill world champion Breezy Johnson, Vonn reacted with displeasure.
“Why am I not stunned?” Vonn wrote on X with a shrug emoji, earlier than deleting her submit and including one other.
In feedback that got here out on Monday, Shiffrin mentioned she was affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction following a crash in November and won’t defend her gold medal in big slalom on the world championships. She did say she would race within the slalom and crew occasion although.
“Perhaps I didn’t assist myself or the crew by having my Twitter fingers out,” Vonn mentioned on Tuesday. “However on the identical time, I’m a human being and I used to be dissatisfied 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 instances 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 a giant hole to make up. Lauren Macuga, one other American, led the downhill portion, whereas Johnson was fourth.
“I used to be in my tuck just about the entire means down and simply not accelerating anyplace,” mentioned Vonn, who returned to full-time snowboarding this season on the age of 40 after practically 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 … but it surely’s onerous to actually change your whole setup when you’re racing on this planet championships.”
The mixed pairings had been chosen by the US crew’s teaching workers 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 appropriate determination. Breezy and Mikaela needs to be the pair. They’re the quickest two skiers … my solely downside was that it wasn’t communicated to me. I discovered about it on Instagram. And I simply suppose it’s just a little unprofessional. It’s only a easy telephone name or textual content message. I feel that’s not a extremely tough factor to ask for.”
Vonn mentioned she reached out and that Shiffrin agreed she would really like the pair to race collectively. However then Vonn was instructed that Shiffrin wasn’t getting into the mixed. Vonn solely discovered of Shiffrin’s closing determination to race within the occasion on Instagram.
“It might have been a cool factor if these two greats would have raced collectively, however in the meanwhile others are stronger of their efficiency,” US pace coach Alex Hoedlmoser mentioned. “We had to ensure 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.”
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