Vonn, Lindsey

▪ 2009

Lindsey Kildow 

born Oct. 18, 1984, St. Paul, Minn.

      A few years earlier, even Lindsey Kildow Vonn would not have predicted that her 2007–08 Alpine skiing season would be her finest. At the World Cup final, held in Bormio, Italy, in mid-March, Vonn and teammate Bode Miller became the first Americans to sweep the overall World Cup titles since Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney accomplished the feat in 1983. At the season's penultimate competition, in Crans-Montana, Switz., Vonn won her 10th career World Cup downhill race to break the American record set by Picabo Street and Daron Rahlves; by then she had already clinched the downhill title, the first American woman to do so since Street in 1996. Barely a week after competing in Bormio, Vonn won the women's slalom at the U.S. Alpine championships in Carrabassett Valley, Maine, for her fourth national title—a welcome turnaround for someone whose career had been filled with setbacks in 2006 and 2007.

      Vonn burst onto the scene in 1999 at age 14 when she won the slalom race at Italy's Trofeo Topolino competition for skiers aged 11–14, becoming the first American female to have captured the event. She skied in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, racing in Alpine combined and slalom, but she managed only a sixth-place finish in combined. She won a silver medal in downhill at the 2003 junior world championships and again took silver in downhill one year later at the U.S. championships. Vonn triumphed in a World Cup race for the first time in 2004, winning in downhill at Lake Louise, Alta. That victory served as a springboard to five more top-three finishes at the next few World Cup events, and she finished the 2004–05 season ranked sixth overall.

      She was a medal favourite going into the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, but she crashed during a downhill training run and was airlifted to a hospital. Vonn, who said at the time that she thought she had broken her back and that her career was over, miraculously returned and within two days was competing despite the injury. She did not win a medal, but her gutsy showing earned her the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. Vonn recovered in time to win silver medals in downhill and supergiant slalom at the 2007 Alpine world championships, but she partially tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in a crash during a training session to put an early end to her season.

      Even after she suffered those two injuries, her determination did not waver. After taking a brief time-out in September 2007 to marry fellow skier Thomas Vonn, she earned six World Cup victories to finish the 2007–08 season with 1,403 points, more than 200 points ahead of her nearest competitor.

Paul DiGiacomo

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