I only heard her commentary for the Super G for broadcast aired 1/24. I think that was day 2? Was she worse on day 1? I didn't care for her commentary for most of the skiers. She seemed to dislike the way most of the women skied and was not hiding it. She had definite favorites - Ledecka, Goggia for instance. It sounded like she was upset she wasn't out there skiing. She seemed to turn upbeat and engaging when the topic returned to herself and her experiences skiing.
Sure, Vonn has her favorites. She's good friends with Goggia (on the first day she tried to play a voice memo that Sofia left for her after her winning run - apparently these voice memos are a regular occurrence) and she knew of Ledecka's prowess even before her Olympic SG victory. But Lindsey is definitely less enamored of some of the current crop of skiers - mostly the ones who aren't "power skiers" (even though LV seems to consider herself a "finesse" skier, which she really wasn't).
I also wonder if the folks at NBC weren't trying to get her to sing her own praises. They certainly had enough "isn't LV great!" bumper pieces to use, and it also eases a recently retired athlete into the commentary game. Some are more natural at it than others. Porino majored in media and communications in college (post-retirement) and developed a TV broadcast style. Folks like Bode, Nyman, Weibrecht, and the like are all over the map in terms of their commentary abilities. Picabo has called a few races and was quite good. Koznick did racer interviews for a few years. Bode's had a few goes at it and each time he's a bit better, more polished (being a businessman doesn't hurt, either - you learn to close the deal via savvy selling abilities).
But right now NBC has leaned on tried-and-true folks for a while. Porino and Doug Lewis get a
lot of airtime. You don't hear as much from Christin Cooper these days. AJ Kitt is occasionally heard, though not much over the past two seasons. And it's a grind doing live play-by-play of European events. Porino does his commentary from the Mountain Time Zone, so he's often calling races at 2:00am. Same thing with Lewis. That's a tough life.
At least LV was in the same building at Dan Hicks. It helps to be able to make eye contact with your fellow commentators, especially starting out. Hopefully she'll get more opportunities to evolve and develop a commentator "vibe." She doesn't need to do it - she's not hurting for things to do - but she would be a welcome addition to the alpine racing commentator crew.
If you want to hear a recently retired female racer who has become a great commentator, try to find some footage of Chemmy Alcott's work for EuroSport UK. She's rapidly evolved into a truly gifted commentator.
