SUN VALLEY, Idaho — Lindsey Vonn will take your apologies now.
Deemed “too old” by some when she retired back in 2019, Vonn stood on a podium Sunday where the youngest woman was a month shy of her 34th birthday.
“Age is just a number,” Vonn said after her second-place finish in the super-G made her, at 40, the oldest woman to make a World Cup podium.
“If you feel good and you’re mentally still driven and you work hard, you can achieve anything you set your mind to.”
Vonn is proof of that. Her medal at the World Cup finals came just four months after she announced she was coming out of retirement.
But Vonn is no longer an outlier when it comes to age. This season has been one reminder after another that female skiers need not have an expiration date.
Federica Brignone is the oldest woman to win the overall title, at 34, while the two women who finished behind her are both 32 or older. Lara Gut-Behrami turns 34 next month while Sofia Goggia is 32.
The top three in both the downhill (Brignone, Cornelia Huetter and Goggia) and the super-G (Gut-Behrami, Brignone and Goggia) this season were all 32 or older, and Brignone and Sara Hector (32) are currently second and third in the season standings for giant slalom.
Brignone also repeatedly set records this year as the oldest woman to win downhill, super-G and giant slalom races, while 33-year-old Anna Swenn-Larsson became the oldest woman to make a slalom World Cup podium. Another 33-year-old, Lena Duerr, also reached the slalom podium.
“It’s really nice,” Brignone said of watching so many “older” women have success.
For too long, there was little room in elite-level sports for women once they reached their late 20s or early 30s. Even women in their early 20s in some sports were looked down upon; yes, gymnastics, that side eye is directed at you.
That was partly because women were forced to choose between their athletic careers and having a family. But there was also the perception that older women weren’t as good. Weren’t as fast. Weren’t as strong. Weren’t as resilient physically. Weren’t as … whatever. You get the idea.
Even women who defied that idea, like Vonn, heard the snide comments, asking when she was going to retire and wondering why she was still hanging around. Never mind that Vonn got 23 of her 82 World Cup wins after her 30th birthday and made the podium another 12 times.
“There’s just an expectation, especially of women at a certain age, that you need to be doing a certain thing, and I don’t believe in that at all,” Vonn said Friday, before the World Cup finals began. “I think you’re only limited to what you push yourself to.”
And more and more, women in all sports are refusing to accept the limitations that have been put on them.
Serena Williams played until she was 40, and her older sister Venus was still playing last year. Diana Taurasi just retired after 20 seasons in the WNBA. Simone Biles dominated the Paris Olympics at 27, an age once considered ancient for a gymnast, winning three gold medals and doing a vault so difficult no other woman even tries it.
Advances in science and nutrition and training have extended the lives of female athletes who want to keep competing. Vonn came out of retirement after a partial knee replacement eliminated the pain that had become a constant, and she said Sunday she no longer even has to ice the repaired knee.
“My right knee has been the best part of my body this whole season,” she said. “It wasn’t about how I was physically this year, it was just I couldn’t put all the pieces together in one run. … I’m a little rusty, but when it works, I know what to do and I know I can put all the pieces together, and I did that today.”
What Vonn said about knowing what to do might be the key to all this. Younger athletes might bounce back quicker or have more energy. But older athletes have a career’s worth of knowledge. They know how to train. They know how to compete. They know what to do in just about every circumstance because they’ve seen it before.
The track for the World Cup finals is new, and Sunday’s super-G was the first race on it after Saturday’s downhills were canceled. Yet Gut-Behrami knew exactly how to navigate the steep, slick course. Vonn knew what was doable on the dry snow, which is similar to what she skis on in Colorado.
“Super-G is really challenging. When you have more experience, it’s easier to be fast,” Gut-Behrami said.
The veteran skiers who dominated the World Cup circuit this year are helping to reframe the narrative around women athletes. Around women in general. If anyone still has something snarky to say to Vonn & Co. about their ages, good luck. It’s going to be real hard to hear it over the clinking of all those medals.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.