From the NY Times: The world's best female skier is American Lindsey Vonn - this season's World Cup overall and downhill champion.
Says the article: "Yet for all her accomplishments and potential, she retains a persistent anonymity in the United States. The timing of her victories did not help, wedged between Winter Olympics in the blind spot of American attention spans toward skiing."
How did I miss this? Maybe cuz skiing is not high on Great Plains' media radar screens, and mountains are seldom thought about at all (cuz those dang center-pivots just don't work on the vertical.) The locally wretched Big 8 football team dominates the sports pages season-in and season-out, and a sixth-string linebacker's 40-yard dash times are lovingly chronicled as "big, important news." Hell, even Major League Baseball's scores don't show up until page 8, well behind the fishin' and huntin' reports.
After said football players and a nostalgia-laden former head coach or two, the next likeliest sports hero is the town taxidermist. Hmmm. Now I know why I missed it. I was temporarily insane.
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