Who is ski racer, Lindsey Vonn?
Lindsey Caroline Kildow was born on 18 October 1984, in St. Paul, Minnesota USA, and is a ski racer, best known for winning four World Cup overall championships as a part of the US Ski Team, one of only two female skiers to do so, alongside Annemarie Moser-Proll.
The Wealth of Lindsey Vonn
How rich is Lindsey Vonn? As of mid-2018, sources inform us of a net worth that is over $1 million, mostly earned through success in professional skiing. She was the 2010 Winter Olympics gold medalist in downhill skiing, the first-ever for American women. She also has a record eight World Cup season titles.
Early Life and Education
Lindsey grew up in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, in Burnsville, Minnesota. Her family is of Norwegian descent, and at the age of two, she had already started learning to ski. Her father was a national junior title winner before sustaining a knee injury which ended his career. At the age of 10, she met Olympic gold medalist ski racer Picabo Street, who would become her role model.
She would go on to attend the University of Missouri High School through an online program of the university, as she was busy training most of the time for a professional competition. She was initially taught by her grandfather, and as a child skied at numerous locations in the US. She struggled a bit while growing up due to her self-consciousness about her height which led her to make adjustments to her style, but she eventually found her stride and the family then moved to Colorado to ski exclusively at Ski Club Vail.
Ski Career
In 1999, Vonn became the first American athlete to win the “Cadets” slalom events in Italy’s Trofeo Topolino di Sci Alpino. She climbed through the ranks of the US Ski Team, made her World Cup debut at the age of 16, and her Olympic debut at the 2002 Winter Olympics the following year, and got her best result of sixth in the combined. She climbed to her first World Cup podium in 2004 and would go on to compete in four races the following year at her first World Championships held in Bormio, Italy.
In 2008, she would win the overall World Cup title, becoming the second American woman to do so after Tamara McKinney, and would repeat the feat the following year, breaking Tamara’s record of 18 World Cup victories and setting an American single-season record-beating Phil Mahre. She also won her first world championship and received numerous awards in the same year. Later in 2009, she sustained a bruised arm after a crash and had to ski with an arm brace, but still won three straight races, becoming the second among American skiers on the all-time career list for World Cup Wins.
Thanks for putting me in the #Fashionable50 @SInow pic.twitter.com/jsE0Iiiogp
— lindsey vonn (@lindseyvonn) July 11, 2018
Later Career
In 2010, Lindsey had difficulty competing at the Winter Olympics due to injuries she sustained while training. She would go on to face her most serious competition from Maria Riesch at the World Cup the following year – while she managed to win several races, Riesch would win the overall by just three points. She would bounce back the following year by gaining her fourth Overall World Cup title and becoming the sixth woman to have won all events at least once. She would become the third most successful female World Cup racer in terms of victories.
She missed most of 2013 and 2014 due to ACL and MCL knee injuries, actually working at the Sochi Olympics for NBC news, and would make her return in 2015, quickly getting back into winning form. She would surpass Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell’s record for most World Cup wins with 82 and eventually compiling 20 titles. She had to miss a good part of 2017 due to a fractured humerus bone, but returned in 2018 to compete at the Winter Olympics in South Korea, winning a bronze in the downhill – she dedicated her Olympic races to her grandfather who had died late in 2017, and even scattered his ashes near the men’s downhill racing course, as he was a Korean War veteran.
Personal Life
It is known that Vonn married 2002 Olympian and former US Ski Team athlete Thomas Vonn in 2007, but in 2011 the couple announced their intention of divorce after four years of marriage, eventually finalized in 2013. She also dated golfer Tiger Woods, but they ended their relationship in 2015. She spends most of her year training after the ski season and frequently stays at either Vail, Colorado, or the home of her friend and former competitor Maria Hofl-Riesch. She is considered the face of her sport in the US and has appeared on television numerous times.