Lindsey Vonn ponders World Cup career wins record

Lindsey Vonn‘s focus is on the Olympics, but her mind is also peeking ahead at one of the most hallowed records in ski racing. The Olympic downhill champion believes the all-time record for World Cup wins is attainable.

Vonn, 29, has 59 career wins. She is second all-time among women behind Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell, who had 62, and has long been thought to eventually break it, even with her major knee injuries.

The long-term goal is the men’s record held by Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark, who won 86 races.

“I’ve already been thinking about that [men's record],” she said, according to Red Bulletin. “My current plan is to keep going until the 2015 World Cup. Then I’ll see how far away I am from that number and then I’ll decide what to do, whether I’ll keep going in every discipline or maybe just downhill and Super-G and concentrate on that record.”

Vonn has been asked about Stenmark’s record before but wasn’t as optimistic.

In March 2012, when she had 53 World Cup wins, the Denver Post reported Vonn “shrugs off the notion of breaking that record, as if it’s the one mark that will never be touched.”

In April 2012, Vonn told Real Vail of Stenmark’s record, “That’s definitely something to look forward to in the future, but right now my goals are just to try to keep winning … I don’t know if it’s feasible to be able to break those records or not.”

Vonn averaged 10 victories per season from 2009 through 2012. If she gets back on that pace and stays healthy, she would need to ski into the 2016-17 World Cup season to pass Stenmark around age 32.

“Records are the only thing that remain of an athlete, the only thing that people will remember,” Vonn told Red Bulletin. “If I want to ensure that people don’t forget me, I can only stop once I’ve set the bar as high as possible for anyone coming after me. That means that as long as I can keep winning I’ll keep skiing. Essentially it’s about what I leave behind, and that means statistics, records.”

- Nick Zaccardi, NBC Sports