Andrew Dampf, AP Sports Writer
WHISTLER, British Columbia -- Maria Riesch and Lindsey Vonn share so much of their lives together it seems they're always in the same place.
Best friends and rivals, they compete all season on the World Cup ski circuit. They spend Christmas at Riesch's house and vacation with one another in the summer.
It wasn't always that way, though.
Vonn began skiing at tiny Buck Hill in Minnesota before she and her family moved to Vail, Colo. Riesch grew up with the Alps right outside her door in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany -- a stop on the World Cup circuit and the site of next season's world championships.
"For me, it was much easier," Riesch said recently. "I had the mountains right in front of my house. Of course my parents were pushing that I learned skiing but from the beginning I just liked it and was always after school (going) directly on the ski hill and always having fun."
Riesch and Vonn are both 25 -- born a month apart -- and first met at the 2000 junior worlds in Quebec.
"We were the youngest competitors and it was exciting to meet people from different countries because that was my first international year," Riesch said.
"So I of course was looking around for people my age and there were not so many, but from the U.S. Ski Team it was Julia (Mancuso) and Lindsey. We started talking and we liked each other from the beginning. Then from year to year we met more often in World Cup also, so it developed as a friendship."
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Riesch studied English from a young age, and Vonn studied German.
"So we never had communication problems," Riesch said. "Her German is good, but we talk in English. She likes it more to talk English, so that's fine for me."
Riesch has invited Vonn to her house in Garmisch the past five years for Christmas, which comes right in the middle of the World Cup season. For the last two years, Vonn brought along her husband, Thomas.
"They have their own room," Riesch said. "They're part of the family."
Riesch's family includes another World Cup racer, her younger sister Susanne, who has a twin brother named Mathias. Vonn also has twins as siblings -- triplets actually.
Riesch finished second to Vonn in the overall World Cup standings last season and is again second to the American entering the final races this season.
Yet the pair find a way to separate their friendship from their rivalry. There's not much trash talking at the dinner table.
"There's been a couple conversations, just totally joking around, where Maria's like, 'Hey, you have two overalls, I want one,'" Thomas said. "But it's always in very joking fashion. They know how to separate it and once the racing is done they're friends. But when they're both in the start, they're certainly not friends. They're not going to give anything to anybody."
Riesch was progressing more rapidly than Vonn before season-ending injuries cut her 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons. The German placed third in the overall standings in 2003-04 when Vonn was 30th.
Germany head coach Mathias Berthold has been working with Riesch for eight years, the first four as head technical coach. He says the crashes still affect her psyche.
"Injuries (don't) make you faster for sure," Berthold said. "They slow you down a little bit and you need quite a while to recover from that."
There has been talk this season about Vonn's decision to use men's skis in the speed events. Riesch tested men's boards in her final training camp before heading to Canada but decided against a last-minute switch.
"This is not the time to change things," Berthold said. "I don't think it's necessary to use men's skis to go fast. Maria is fast anyway, whatever skis she uses. The testing just showed that we will stay with the same material -- and they worked in St. Moritz."
Two weeks ago in the Swiss resort, Riesch snapped Vonn's perfect run of five consecutive downhill wins.
The pair will now go head-to-head in all five Olympic races, starting with the downhill Wednesday and the super-combined a day later. Vonn may have the upper hand in downhill, but Riesch is a more accomplished slalom skier for the combined.
The German has won six World Cup slaloms to Vonn's two and Riesch won the slalom at last season's worlds -- where Vonn swept gold in downhill and super-G.
Neither Vonn nor Riesch has won an Olympic medal. This is Riesch's first Olympics; she missed the Turin Games four years ago because of injury. Vonn's status is in question as she recovers from a bruised right shin, but her condition appears to have improved.
"I know this kind of injury," Riesch said. "I've had it myself a couple of times and it's really painful, especially in the ski boot, because you have all the pressure at that spot where you have the injury. But with some painkillers and biting on your teeth, it should be OK."
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AP Sports Writers Graham Dunbar and Howard Fendrich contributed to this report.