American skier Lindsey Vonn is experiencing the epitome of good news, bad news today. The head injury she suffered severely held her back at the beginning of the downhill skiing season; as her season is going downhill (pun intended). On the flip side, she won an international sportswoman of the year award.
From USA Today:
Lindsey Vonn is clearly not her normal self. Perhaps more worrying, the Olympic downhill champion isn’t sure when she’ll be fully recovered from her head injury.
Attempting to defend her title, Vonn finished a dismal seventh in the super-G that opened the world championships Tuesday, crossing 0.84 seconds behind Austrian winner Elisabeth Goergl.
Vonn lost time at each checkpoint and became increasingly shaky as she went down. On the bottom half of the icy and shady Kandahar course, the American was uncharacteristically wild and struggled simply to maintain her line.
From the International Business Times:
At this year’s Laureus Sport Awards, held at Abu Dhabi on Monday, Spain’s Tennis World Number 1 Rafael Nadal and USA’s Skiing Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn bagged the top honors of ‘Sportsman’ and ‘Sportswoman’ of the year, respectively.
Hosted by Hollywood’s double Oscar winner actor Kevin Spacey, the event was attended by top celebrities from the sports and entertainment industries.
Vonn’s third consecutive overall World Cup title gave her the top honor over high jumper Blanka Vlasic and tennis superstars Serena Williams, Kim Clijsters and Caroline Wozniacki.
Winners were chosen by 46 top-notch sportsmen who make up the Laureus sports academy and apart from Nadal, Spain’s other honor went to their World-Cup winning national soccer team for the ‘Team of the Year’ award.