BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Before starting down the track, ski racers often receive course reports by radio, detailing conditions and delivered by teammates at the finish who skied the course ahead of them.

It’s not every day those reports come from Lindsey Vonn, three-time Olympic medalist, 82-time World Cup winner and one of alpine skiing’s greats.

But they did on Saturday, when Vonn foreran the downhill course at Beaver Creek’s Birds of Prey World Cup course, testing the track for conditions and safety before some of the world’s top skiers hit the slopes — and radioing up to her American teammates encouraging them to send it.

The sun was high, the course was fast and the mood was celebratory as Vonn came through the finish in a spray of snow, waving to cheers from a packed crowd. As a forerunner, her time has not been released and did not count for the official standings, topped by Cornelia Huetter from Austria with a time of 1:32.38.

“I am so friggin’ happy to be back here,” Vonn said in an interview with Birds of Prey commentator Parker Biele after forerunning the course.

She’s baaackkk 😏

From her 2011 super-G win to forerunning the historic women’s Birds of Prey downhill, it only feels right that @lindseyvonn‘s comeback starts here.

She’ll do it again for tomorrow’s super-G 🤘#stifelusskiteam pic.twitter.com/aKZhRAAH0I

— U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam) December 14, 2024

The last time Vonn raced at a World Cup event was in 2019, not long before her retirement brought on by years of injuries. But last month, Vonn announced a comeback to the world of alpine racing, attempting what very few have done: return to the sport’s top tier, at age 40, after years of retirement.

Vonn raced earlier this month at a lower-level event at Copper Mountain in Colorado, securing the minimum points needed to request a wild card entry into World Cup races, reserved for retired skiers who have found success at the top of the sport. After forerunning at Birds of Prey, she plans to make her return to World Cup competition next weekend at St. Moritz in Switzerland.

That will be more than two decades since Vonn made her World Cup debut in 2000 at age 16. In the years that followed, she became one of the most successful women in alpine racing, developing a reputation for fast, powerful skiing. She often raced with men’s skis and frequently requested to compete on men’s courses, to no avail.

Things have changed since then. On Saturday, women raced the challenging downhill Birds of Prey track at Beaver Creek — typically reserved for men — for the first time. The only other time women competed at the course was in 2011 on a version of the Super-G track, when a lack of snow in France relocated the event for one year only (women also raced an adjacent course at Beaver Creek in 2015). The winner of that 2011 race? Vonn.

“Birds of Prey is a hill that constantly is pulling you down,” Vonn said Friday about her past experience at Beaver Creek. “You can go extremely fast … if you let it take you.”

It’s that past experience that Biele, a former racer herself now commentating at the event, says is invaluable for fellow American women.

“What she’s able to do is provide mentorship to them and really guide them,” Biele said. “She’s raced all these hills before. So having somebody who’s done that and been on these tracks and has had this experience is such a valuable asset to give to this next generation of racers.”

With Birds of Prey historically reserved for men, U.S. women have not had too many chances to race World Cups on home soil.

“To have this opportunity to really take advantage of it is so nice, and to come down to a home crowd, I mean, in Europe, there are some U.S. fans there, but to come down and have someone cheering for you is such a nice feeling,” said Lauren Macuga, 22, who finished fourth with a time of 1:32.90, the fastest of the seven Americans racing Saturday and the only one to break the top 10. “It’s so exciting.”

More than two dozen family members and friends came out to support 2022 Olympian Bella Wright, passing out t-shirts to a largely American crowd — a rare occurrence when many women’s World Cups take place abroad.

“I’ve been coming to Beaver Creek to watch the men since I was 4 years old,” Wright said on Friday before racing began. “It means a lot for me to be here and it means even more to have the women be able to do the same track as the men. I think that historically this is just going to be a moment that we’re going to look back on and realize that women can do more men’s tracks, which is so exciting.”

It’s exciting for locals too. Kathi Kotula has lived in Vail Valley for 27 years and has worked the Birds of Prey event for 14. (She was looking forward to seeing Vail local and alpine great Mikaela Shiffrin race the course, but Shiffrin is out with an injury after crashing last month during a World Cup race in Vermont.)

“We’re used to the grandeur of all the men coming into town and the excitement and the fun, but I swear, this year, when they announced women would be coming, there was a joy in the valley,” Kotula said. “We were so stoked that we had the opportunity.”

As Birds of Prey wraps up and the World Cup circuit continues, attention now turns to how Vonn will perform in top-level races — and whether she could be competitive for the 2026 Olympics.

Her comeback at age 40 is unprecedented among female alpine skiers. When Vonn retired in 2019, she was already the oldest woman to medal in alpine skiing at the Olympics, winning bronze at age 33 at Pyeongchang in 2018. Earlier this year, Italian Federica Brignone, 34, became the oldest woman to win a World Cup race. (Brignone placed ninth in the downhill on Saturday).

But Vonn joins a larger group of professional athletes to compete into their 40s, including sports legends like Serena Williams and Tom Brady. In 2022, French skier Johan Clarey became the oldest alpine racer to medal at the Olympics at age 41.

Spectators cheer for Lindsey Vonn on Saturday during the first women’s World Cup event held on the famed Birds of Prey course at Beaver Creek. (Jason Connolly / AFP via Getty Images)

At Beaver Creek on Friday, Vonn also cited women younger than her pushing age boundaries in their respective sports — namely Simone Biles, who made her third Olympic team this past summer at age 27. In Paris, Biles became the oldest women’s Olympic all-around gold medalist since 1952.

“I think Simone Biles is the perfect example of what can be done at an older age, and she’s not even old. It’s just, it’s outside of the confines of what we believe is the right age for the sport,” Vonn said.

“I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel, I’m just doing what I feel is right for me, but at the same time continuing on what other women have done before me.”

Vonn has cited a variety of reasons driving her comeback: She missed having teammates, she missed skiing, she missed skiing fast.

But the main reason Vonn returned from retirement was straightforward: Her body could do it.

“What changed my mind was just that I was put back together again,” Vonn said.

It’s an outcome that seemed far from guaranteed after years of high-speed crashes, painful injuries and surgeries, including a series of ligament tears in her knee in 2013 and 2014. She retired in 2019 not long after yet another ligament tear.

“The last years of my career, I think, were a lot more challenging than I let on and anyone really understood,” Vonn said.

Eight months after knee replacement surgery and more than five years since her last race, Vonn said she feels better at 40 than she did at times earlier in her career.

“I couldn’t do, you know, a 10-inch jump, single leg, over the last few years of my career,” she said. “And now I’m doing 20 inches, no problem.”

Whether or not Vonn can get back on top is another question, one that will be answered in the next few months of racing.

She certainly has her skeptics. In the world of sports, comeback announcements are often accompanied by cynics wondering if it’s all just for sponsorships or press coverage. With Vonn’s history of injuries and the dangers of skiing, some fans just don’t think she can do it.

“I’m 10 years on a knee replacement, so I know what that’s all about, but racing’s a lot different,” said Bruce Evans, a spectator who arrived at Beaver Creek Saturday decked out in an American flag ski suit, carrying an American flag signed by everyone from 1960s alpine Olympian Billy Kidd to Vonn herself.

“Especially in downhills, you’re on the edge all the time or you’re not going to be near the top in the finish order. As far as her making the choice, hey, more power to her, especially if she can be successful at it.”

Vonn says she’s all in.

“I don’t just whimsically rejoin the U.S. Ski Team,” she said Friday.

Instead, Vonn said she plans to get back to where she was before retirement.

“Success is not just participating,” Vonn said.

GO DEEPER

With World Cup in her backyard, Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Kilde focus on recovery

(Top illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Dustin Satloff / U.S. Ski and Snowboard / Getty Images; Mine Kasapoglu / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)

Josh Allen added to his MVP resume on Sunday as he accounted for four touchdowns in the Buffalo Bills’ 48-42 win over the Detroit Lions on the road. 

The Bills moved to 11-3 on the season, while the Lions are now 12-2. 

Allen, the MVP frontrunner in Vegas, threw for 362 yards on 23-of-34 passing with two passing touchdowns. But the first two scores for Buffalo in this one came on the ground for Allen, who had 11 carries for 68 yards. 

Buffalo got off to a 14-0 start at a tough Ford Field as Allen orchestrated back-to-back touchdown drives in which he scored from one yard out and four yards out, respectively. 

Jared Goff and the Lions, though, are one of the best offenses in the league, and you knew they were going to respond somehow.

On the Lions’ third drive, Goff found Tim Patrick after scrambling out of the pocket, and he used his entire wingspan to get the ball across the goal line to make it a 14-7 game. 

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But James Cook, who had two touchdowns and 105 yards rushing on 14 carries, found the end zone for the first time on the ensuing drive to maintain the gap.

It’s what the Bills did all game long: maintaining the lead despite how many times the Lions scored. 

Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs runs for a first down against Buffalo Bills cornerback Christian Benford during the first half at Ford Field in Detroit. (IMAGN)

And they got in six times as Goff threw for a whopping 494 yards and five touchdowns on 38-of-59 passing. 

Amon-Ra St. Brown, his trusty target, had 14 catches to account for 193 of those yards with a score on a 66-yard catch-and-run, and Jahmyr Gibbs tallied one on the ground and one through the air. 

Goff even threw a touchdown to offensive lineman Dan Skipper from nine yards out as offensive coordinator Ben Johnson pulled out all the stops to get back into the game. 

But Allen and the Bills would reciprocate the scores, with Ray Davis and Khalil Shakir accounting for Allen’s passing touchdowns on the day. 

Ty Johnson, Cook’s backup, was also the leading receiver for Buffalo with 114 yards on five catches.

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen scrambles out of the pocket against the Detroit Lions. (Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images)

For the Lions, Sam LaPorta had 111 yards on seven catches and Gibbs finished with 83 yards.

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NORTHVILLE, Mich. — Fahad Yousif is two days removed from receiving something called a Certificate of Completion from the National Football League. It is dated Dec. 12. It is signed by Ari Novick, Ph.D., a licensed psychotherapist with a private practice in Laguna Beach, Calif. It is numbered “Cert #216932,” meaning 216,931 others presumably have received such an honor. It cost $250 — the fee Yousif paid for a four-hour course covering about eight or nine chapters of fan behavior expectations in NFL stadiums. 

He holds up his phone to show me. 

“I can’t believe it came to this,” he says. 

This is what happens when it all goes too far. Yousif is the Detroit Lions fan who decided to chirp at the Green Bay Packers sideline during pregame festivities at Ford Field last weekend. Some choice words (no swearing, he makes clear) were followed by drawing his thumb across his neck, making a slashing motion. That, it turns out, was a terrible, terrible idea. Because to some, notably Packers coach Matt LaFleur, what started as some mouthy fan talking trash had crossed over to a raving madman making a threat. LaFleur fired back at Yousif. Yousif, smiling wildly, yelled back at LaFleur. Security got involved. 

Yousif was on the field as a perk of his ticket package. Allowed to choose one add-on bonus for the 2024 season, he opted to be one of those fans who pull a giant American flag taut across the field during the pregame national anthem. Instead, security escorted him off the field before the anthem ever began.

The dust-up went viral. Yousif, after returning to his seat, was ejected from Ford Field before halftime. Then LaFleur spoke about the incident in the postgame news conference, saying Detroit’s pregame activities should’ve been policed better. On Wednesday, the Lions revoked Yousif’s season tickets. Then he was banned from attending NFL games. Every day brought new waves of coworkers and old friends texting, “Did I see you on TV?” and media requests. Yousif took each opportunity to acknowledge he was in the wrong and apologize. Everyone, including Yousif, more or less agreed that he went too far out there. 

Near the end of the week, the Lions and the league offered a path forward. The stadium ban would be lifted, Yousif was told, if he completed the code of conduct class and wrote a formal apology. 

Now, here we are. It’s Saturday afternoon, nearly a week removed from the incident, and nearly 24 hours until the Lions host the Buffalo Bills in the NFL’s marquee game this weekend. Yousif accepted an invitation to meet at a Starbucks in Metro Detroit. 

Maybe this could be about life in the blast radius of a viral moment. 

Or it could be about nearly missing out on what might end up as the greatest season in Lions history. 

Or about contrition. 

Or second chances.

But then Yousif is asked about what he nearly lost. 

“Oh, man, everything,” he says. “This is who I am, and, you know, I almost lost that. I don’t dismiss any of the criticism I’ve gotten. None of it. I agree with most of it.

“I was blessed with an honor to hold the flag of a country I love. I crossed the line and it shouldn’t have happened. I get where people are coming from. I can’t believe this happened.”

Yousif is a lot of things. He’s a product of Metro Detroit’s vast Chaldean community — a first-generation American born to a father from Iraq and a mother from Kuwait. He’s an older sibling to two brothers. He’s a Wayne State University graduate. He’s a sales associate for a Midwest automotive tools company. He’s a husband to wife Gabby.

What he most identifies as, though, is as a Lions fan. 

Yousif grew up speaking only Arabic at home. He tried everything to fit in at school and came to feel most comfortable talking about football. He says that, growing up attending Farmington Hills public schools, he’d introduce himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Fahad. I’m a big Lions fan.” 

Yousif ignored pleas from his father, Saad, to play soccer. He instead lined up at defensive end and linebacker through middle school and into high school. He scored tickets to his first game at Ford Field in 2013. He and an older cousin began attending four or five games a year. 

“It was so natural,” Yousif says. “It was like, this is where we’re from, this is who we root for. Root for the Lions, no matter what.”

Yousif grew to learn and understand the game more and more, but, like so many others, fell into the same trap that’s befallen generations of Lions fans. He believed. 

“Oh, the Matt Patricia era, bro,” he says now, fighting through a laugh, “I totally bought the hype.” 

But like all those generations of Lions fans, something came from that belief. Shared experience. Yousif convinced his father to start rooting for the Lions. He sold the dream. “This is the year.” Soon, Yousif stopped attending games, choosing instead to watch them at his dad’s house. Two chairs. Big-screen TV. Standing appointment. 

“Every year, he got more and more into it,” Yousif says. “He finally got it, and it kinda changed our whole relationship. Those years weren’t very good for the Lions, but, you know, they were good for us.” 

The Dan Campbell era in Detroit began in 2021 with the franchise trading star quarterback Matthew Stafford for Jared Goff. Yousif called his father the minute the news broke. It was mid-March. Saad, at 65, was newly retired and ready to get aboard his next ride as a Lions fan.  

Six weeks later, Yousif got word that his father was feeling sick. He entered the hospital. He was placed on a ventilator.

“It was so quick,“ Yousif says. “Within 10 days, he was dead.” 

Yousif hasn’t mentioned any of this through his numerous media appearances this week. Viral moments don’t afford time. That, and his story doesn’t excuse what happened last week. 

“It still shouldn’t have happened,” he says. “I was also a big pro wrestling fan growing up and I think I’ve got some of that in my personality. I root for the heel.” 

That personality, you can be certain, is big. Yousif is the loudest person in the coffee shop by a wide margin. He speaks like he’s drinking jet fuel. One customer has closed his laptop and moved to a far table. But Yousif can’t really seem to help it. He seems to only operate with excitement and emotion and in equal proportions. 

Until he talks about these last few Lions seasons. After his father’s death, Yousif wasn’t sure he could watch the Lions anymore. Every game was tied to loss, no matter the outcome. Saying this, he gets caught, and pauses, jaw clenched, cheeks trembling. 

The 2021 season came and went. He watched games in 2022 at home with an empty seat for his dad. Before 2023, he decided to make the big move. Season tickets. Lower bowl. Section 141, 33 rows up. 

He watched his team go 12-5 and win the NFC North last season. 

“I know it sounds crazy — really, I do — but it’s felt like Dad being like, yo, it’s OK, I got you,” he says. “I’ve been telling people these last few years that he’s got his hands all over this. I found a lot of comfort in that. I think he heard me say I didn’t want to watch the Lions anymore. He wanted to make it easier.” 

Now Yousif is rooting for football’s unlikeliest juggernaut. The Lions are 12-1 and current favorites to do it — something so unthinkable that we won’t even say it.

Neither he nor anyone else can quite wrap their heads around what is all playing out. Yousif says he admits his mistake, and accepts the punishment, but also believes LaFleur overreacted and perhaps this all never needed to escalate so much. He’s hoping for another Lions-Packers matchup in the playoffs. 

He plans to be there for it. Just as he plans to be in the stands for Lions-Bills. A massive group of longtime season ticket holders who operate a tailgate out of Eastern Market invited him to Sunday’s tailgate. There might be an available ticket for him.  

While his season tickets are gone, apparently forever, Yousif can still go see his team. 

So he’ll go be a fan.

He doesn’t know how to be anything else. 

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Nic Antaya / Getty Images; Courtesy of Fahed Yousif)