In super combined, a gold medal for Vonn would get U.S. off to hot start

Lindsey Vonn will ski in five events in her third Olympics, with an outside chance of winning medals in all of them. But the quest starts here, in an event that will show whether she is the all-around skier she wants to be -- and a true threat to medal in everything she enters.

The super combined consists of one downhill run (Vonn's strength) and one slalom run (a potential weakness). The times of the two runs are added together, meaning Vonn could post a big lead after the downhill and then have to stave off stronger technical skiers in the slalom.

The good sign for Vonn, the 25-year-old who grew up outside Minneapolis and now lives in Vail, Colo.: She won the only combined event on the World Cup circuit this season, in December in Val d'Isere, France. The bad sign: She has struggled leading up to the Olympics in technical races -- slalom and giant slalom -- failing to finish two races and then failing to qualify for the second slalom run in Maribor, Slovenia.

So the super combined could set the tenor for Vonn's entire Olympics -- just as Michael Phelps's dominant victory in the 400-meter individual medley sent him on his way to a record eight gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Games.

Will Vonn become skiing's Phelps, carrying NBC and the United States through the Games? The super combined -- in which stiff competition will come from Germany's Maria Riesch, Vonn's best friend, and Sweden's Anja Paerson -- provides the first clue.