role model

 Sports Illustrated is getting some heat for this month’s cover of Lindsey Vonn shown on the left. Some people are saying it’s too suggestive, but I’m willing to give the magazine a pass and save my condemnation for its next sexist swimsuit issue. Fewer than 4% of SI covers showcase female athletes, so I’m celebrating that Vonn is being featured. I am also old enough to remember its 1992 cover featuring A.J. Kitt shown to the right, which pictured him in a similar pose.

When all is said and done, this time Sports Illustrated got one thing exactly right. Just as its cover proclaims, Lindsey Vonn is America’s best woman skier ever, and she makes it look so effortless that it is a joy to just watch her. She has the grace, skill, and poise of a natural athlete who has taken years to perfect her style.

Jim Tracy, a United States ski-team coach, described the first time he saw her ski this way: “She’s hauling down the mountain, her skis probably going 60, but the rest of her was hardly moving. It was like watching water flow down a hill.”