Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Caroline Vonn was born Lindsey Caroline Kildow on October 18, 1984, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is an American alpine ski racer who claimed four overall World Cup championships (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012). At the 2010 Winter Olympics, she became the first American woman to win gold in the downhill. Vonn also set records with eight World Cup season titles in downhill (2008–2013, 2015, 2016), five in super-G (2009–2012, 2015), and three straight in the combined (2010–2012). In 2016, she earned her 20th career crystal globe, the most ever for any skier, surpassing Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. She also holds the third-highest super ranking among all skiers, male or female.

Vonn is one of only six women to win World Cup races in all five alpine disciplines—downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and super combined—and as of January 22, 2026, has 84 career World Cup victories. When she retired in 2019, her 82 wins were a women’s record, later broken by Mikaela Shiffrin in January 2023. Only Shiffrin and Stenmark have more wins, with Shiffrin holding the overall record. Alongside her Olympic gold and bronze, two World Championship golds (2009), three silvers (2007, 2011), and four overall World Cup titles, Vonn ranks among the most decorated American ski racers and is widely considered one of the greatest alpine skiers ever.

In 2011, she won the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year award and was named U.S. Olympic Committee sportswoman of the year. Injuries forced her to miss large portions of the 2013 and 2014 seasons; during recovery, she worked as a correspondent for NBC News at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. She announced her retirement in 2019 due to injuries but returned to competitive skiing in November 2024, becoming the oldest downhill World Cup winner at age 41.

Vonn grew up in Burnsville, Minnesota, the daughter of Linda Anne Krohn and Alan Lee Kildow. Her father is of Irish descent; her mother had German and Norwegian roots. She skied at age two and joined Erich Sailer’s development program at Buck Hill, which also produced racer Kristina Koznick. Her father, a former national junior champion before a knee injury, pushed her hard, according to Sailer. At nine, she met Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, who became her mentor. Street recalled watching Vonn ski in 1999, marveling at her love for the fall line: “The faster she went, the bigger the smile… You can’t teach somebody to love the fall line like that little girl did.” Vonn commuted to Colorado to train before her family moved to Vail in the late 1990s. She attended University of Missouri High School online, speaks fluent German, and later completed a four-day program at Harvard Business School.

Her grandfather Don Kildow taught her to ski in Milton, Wisconsin. She began skiing at Buck Hill and on family drives to Vail, often sleeping in the back while her mother sang to Eric Clapton tapes. In the late 1990s, she and her siblings and mother moved to Colorado to ski with Ski Club Vail. She later said she missed childhood traditions like sleepovers and school dances, and felt guilty that her siblings left their friends for her. In 1999, she and Will McDonald became the first Americans to win the “Cadets” slalom at Italy’s Trofeo Topolino. She made her World Cup debut at age 16 on November 18, 2000, in Park City, Utah.

At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, she placed sixth in combined. On March 4, 2003, she earned a silver medal in downhill at the Junior World Championship in France. A bike ride with fellow racer Julia Mancuso and her father Ciro—where she fell far behind—prompted Vonn to overhaul her training attitude.