VANCOUVER, British Columbia
America's biggest stars shone brightly at the Vancouver Olympics on Wednesday.
Lindsey Vonn, Shani Davis and Shaun White all delivered the gold medals they were favored to win.
And while Apolo Anton Ohno didn't compete in a medal event, he stayed on pace to surpass Bonnie Blair's U.S. record of six career Winter Olympic medals.
Vonn shook off a bruised right shin that made it painful to even wear a ski boot to dominate the women's downhill. It was the first of five events she's expected to compete in here.
replica breitling watchesLater in the day, Davis added a gold in 1,000-meter speedskating. It was the second straight gold medal in the event for the world- record holder.
And White defended his Olympic title in men's halfpipe, defeating Finland's Peetu Piiroinen to give the United States its third gold medal of the day.
Meanwhile, Ohno easily advanced through the preliminaries of 1,000-meter short track and helped the United States advance to the 5,000 relay final with a second-place finish in its semifinal heat.
Vonn won the downhill in 1 minute, 44.19 seconds - more than a half-second quicker than anyone else - to collect her first career Olympic medal in the opening women's race. It's the first downhill gold for an American woman, and Vonn combined with Julia Mancuso to give the United States its first 1-2 finish in an Olympic Alpine event since 1984. Elisabeth Goergl of Austria was third, nearly 1 1/ 2 seconds behind Vonn.
"A huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders now. I got the gold medal that I came here to get. And now I'm just going to attack every day, with no regrets and no fear," said Vonn, a 25-year-old who lives and trains in Vail, Colo. "And, I mean, I'm just happy with one. Anything else from here on out is a bonus."
She could make it 2 for 2 in today 's super-combined . Freezing overnight temperatures made the downhill slope especially slick Wednesday, and a series of scary falls prompted organizers to shorten the course and shave down the final jump before today's action.
The downhill was interrupted for about a half-hour while Edith Miklos, a 21-year-old Romanian, was airlifted off the course by helicopter. Five-time Olympic medalist Anja Paerson, one of Vonn's chief rivals, lost control on the last leap, sailing about half a football field before landing on her back, tumbling through a gate and sliding through the red finish line. Marion Rolland of France stumbled out of the start and tore a ligament replica hublot watches in her left knee not 5 seconds into her run, four years of work discarded in an instant.
Mancuso, who hasn't won a World Cup race in nearly three years, was 10th out of the starting gate and took the early lead by going nearly a second faster than Goergl, a margin Vonn called "a little bit alarming." When Thomas Vonn - a former Olympic skier who serves as a coach and adviser to his wife - saw that, he radioed to Lindsey to tell her she would need to ski aggressively to top Mancuso's performance.
Lindsey's reply to Thomas, essentially: "I got it."
That's an understatement.
"One of the most clutch runs I've ever seen. She had the weight of the world on her, and people basically hanging the medal around her neck before she went out of the start," he said. "That's incredibly hard to deal with."
Davis used a fu
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