Ahead of Olympic gold medal run, Suter watched videos of idol Vonn

BEIJING (AP) — What better way to prepare for an Olympic downhill race than by watching Lindsey Vonn.

Swiss skier Corinne Suter checked out some old videos of the sport’s most successful downhiller before her run at the Beijing Games on Tuesday and then went out and won gold — making her the first woman since Vonn in 2010 to hold the Olympic and world championship titles in the sport’s fastest and most dangerous discipline at the same time.

“She’s my biggest idol,” Suter said, adding that she watches old runs from Vonn “all the time.”

When Suter raced in Val d’Isere, France, she pulled up Vonn’s runs at the French resort. For this race, she viewed some of Vonn’s training runs.

“I just like how she skis with her body and how aggressive she’s doing the turns,” Suter said of Vonn, the 2010 Olympic champion whose 43 World Cup downhills are the most ever by a man or woman. “I just watch sometimes the turns.”

Three years ago, Suter could examine Vonn up close when she took silver in the world championship downhill in Are, Sweden, while Vonn took bronze in the final race of her career.

In Beijing, Suter handled the high-speed turns on a course known as The Rock better than anyone else to beat defending champion Sofia Goggia by 0.16 seconds.

Goggia skied two spots before Suter and when she came down into the lead, it meant that three Italians were occupying the podium positions: Goggia, eventual bronze medalist Nadia Delago and Elena Curtoni, who eventually finished fifth.

Just before Suter’s run, the cameras flashed to Italian coach Michael “Much” Mair, who started crossing his arms as if to say, “Stop the race now!”

Suter was faster than Goggia through the first three checkpoints but trailed the Italian by 0.18 seconds at the