Olympic downhill champion Lindsey Vonn (pictured) lauded the already popular Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic course, located in the Krasnaya Polyana mountains, which last weekend held men's World Cup events, and will host the women on Saturday and Sunday.

"The snow's a little bit soft, and it's definitely windy today, but the first impression was good," said the three-time world champion.

"I like the trail, the middle section's really fun, you know, a lot of terrain and a lot of fun little bumps and rolls in there.

"I think it's definitely a good course.

"They've got some side-hill, some bumps and terrain, and a cool little waterfall-type turn, a big traverse, there's a lot of cool aspects to it."

American Vonn is leading both the downhill and super combined standings going into the weekend's Alpine World Cup meeting at the Sochi 2014 test event, and can claim both titles with a good performance.

A number of competitors last week praised the course, which was also hailed by Jean Claude Killy, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission which was on its seventh visit to the black sea resort this week.

Killy said: "[The event was] one of the most spectacular downhill courses on the entire circuit."

Though it has received much praise for its challenging design, there will be adjustments to the course before the Winter Olympics in two years. Vonn added that it was not the easiest to navigate.

"I didn't ski it that well but it was ok.

"The top was definitely challenging, turny, technical.

"It was fine for the first training run and it's good to get a run on the Olympic track under my belt.

"It's kinda hard to find your timing on a couple of the turns because you come in with some high speed and then it's kind of an abrupt 180 turn in some places."


Italy's Johanna Schnarf (pictured) was another to take to the course and echoed Vonn's comments about its challenging nature.

"It's a nice course, but it's not so easy as we thought," she said.

"The ground is full of bumps, nice jumps, it's really interesting."

Maria Hoefl-Riesch also noted its difficulty: "All in all it's really difficult," he said.

"Everyone said, 'yeah, Sochi is so easy and so flat.'

"It's not, it's really lots of terrain, even the flat parts are with may rolls, so it's really challenging."

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