Whistler, British Columbia » When Lindsey Vonn headed to the start house for the women's downhill on Wednesday, her husband and coach was fully prepared to come along, to calm her down before the biggest race of her life.

Until she told him to stay behind.

"I got this," she said.

It was an unusual show of confidence from a woman known for her pre-race anxiety, and it was that moment when Thomas Vonn knew his wife, the 25-year-old Park City resident, was "rock solid" and about to do something special at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. "For this kind of pressure, to be that solid was amazing," he said.

So was her performance.

Still fighting a bruised shin and knowing she needed a great run to realize her lifelong dream, Vonn laid down a nearly perfect performance on the bumpy and challenging Whistler Mountain course to become the first American woman to win an Olympic downhill -- amid smothering pressure to live up to her pedigree as a double world champion and two-time defending overall World Cup champ.

"The expectations and the weight of this were incredible," Thomas Vonn said.

When she finished, to the roaring cheers of a flag-waving crowd, Vonn fell into the snow, thrusting an arm into the air in relief and celebration. Later, tears streamed down her face as she broke down while waiting in a holding pen for the rest of the skiers to finish.

"I'm overwhelmed," she said. "It was the best feeling in my life."

Teammate Julia Mancuso, the defending gold medalist in the giant slalom who graduated from the Winter Sports School in Park City a decade ago, took a surprise silver for the first 1-2 finish for the U.S. in alpine skiing since the 1984 Sarajevo Games.

But the story was all Vonn.

Just two weeks ago, she feared her hopes of finally winning an Olympic medal were dashed once again when she injured her shin in a training crash in Austria. She has barely trained since then, using everything in her power to speed the healing, from painkilling cremes to a kind of cheese believed in Europe to help control inflammation.

The shin was still "killing me" when Vonn stepped to the line under bright, sunny skies.

But it was much better than it would have been, if she had had to ski last weekend, before bad weather forced her first race and several training runs to be postponed. That allowed her crucial extra recovery time.

Just as challenging was knowing that Mancuso had just put down a tremendous run -- Great Britain's Chemmy Alcott boldly predicted it would hold up for gold -- though Vonn said that actually helped control her anxiety.

"I knew that it wasn't an option to be nervous," she said. "I had to take it."

Take it, she did.

Charging down the course, Vonn finished in 1 minute, 44.19 seconds. That was 0.56 seconds ahead of Mancuso and more than a full second ahead of bronze medalist Elisabeth Goergl of Austria.

She had to wait through nearly 30 more skiers to finish their runs, but nobody else came close. Vonn became certain of victory long before the official conclusion of the race, once Sweden's Anja Paerson became one of seven crash victims on the course and friend and rival Maria Riesch of Germany -- the pre-race favorite to challenge Vonn -- skied with shocking timidity to finish far back in eighth place.

"I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders," Vonn said. "There was a lot of expectations and a lot of pressure coming into these games, and I stood up to that and I fought back today and I think I proved to everyone that I'm a good skier."

Of that, there was little doubt.

Many had tipped Vonn to win multiple medals here, based on her stunning success the past two years.

But Vonn always had said that just one would be enough, knowing from painful experience how fleeting ski-racing success can be. She did not medal at the 2006 Turin Games after a horrifying training crash landed her in the hospital.

With the pressure off, she's suddenly poised to claim even more hardware, and already has convinced women's alpine coach Jim Tracy sthese Olympics now rank as the best of the six he has coached, having seen Vonn and Mancuso fight through their setbacks.

"All her work -- her whole career, especially since Torino -- has all been done for this moment, right here," Thomas Vonn said. "Her whole life focus has been about this day. The eight-hour workouts, the sore mornings, the skipping going out with your friends. All for this, and no one deserves it more."