Vonnderlust

I think 2002 was the last time I sought out the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in order to see a specific woman, Yamila Diaz-Rahi, I believe, on that occasion.

But in the day or two following Lindsey Vonn's gold medal in the downhill, a friend and I bantered about her: "I told [my wife] that I have a crush on Lindsay Vonn, and SHE TOTALLY GOT IT." "I wonder how much she knows about polygamy, and would she like to know more? At last, a 'restitution thing' worth waiting for!" - Facebook status updates that, as you can imagine, garnered a lot of commentary. Our interests in her developed independently, but once our threads crossed (through his wife, the one who "TOTALLY GOT IT" and called our shared interest to our attention), we compared notes and were surprised to learn that for both of us, it was much more pre-pubescent schoolboyish than hormonal. That she is physically attractive is an undeniable facilitator, but the je ne sais quoi allure seemed to be in her smile, her grace and apparent sweetness, and her obvious strength and discipline, not in her T&A, almost as if this denizen of Olympus were too much of a symbol or even archetype to be the cause of heavy breathing.

So when I heard--or thought I heard--one of the NBC commentators say something like, "...to see a strong, beautiful, fully-clothed woman like Lindsay on the cover of SI in February is a refreshing break from the usual fare..." I thought I would check it out. If you've followed this blog at all, you know that I won't hesitate to call my dog in a race, so you can therefore believe me when I say that I was led by intrigue and awe, not by lust, fully expecting to be informed and further infatuated, rather than titillated. But when the first Google result to my "sports illustrated lindsey vonn" search included the words "swimsuit by...", the fact that my wife and I have for the last day or two been giving each other the semi-silent treatment in the aftermath of a strong disagreement over the appropriate price range in which we should be shopping for houses, helped turn up the heat under the lukewarm kettle of quasi-platonic curiosity, and I clicked away.

So anyway, there was Mrs. Vonn in much of her glorious glory at SI.com. I'm not sure what happened to the "fully-clothed" part, but "strong" and "beautiful" were right on the money.