People Call Lindsey Vonn the World’s Greatest Skier. Does She Need the Olympics? Image Lindsey Vonn, 33, is about to compete in her fourth Olympics. She will be among the favorites in the downhill and the super-G, as well as a medal contender in the Alpine combined. Credit Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
About 100 days after her 17th birthday, Lindsey Kildow charged out of the gate in her first race at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics to a startling top 10 finish.
At the time, the American women’s ski team was in disarray. Its only star, the Olympic champion Picabo Street, was retiring, and the racers expected to ascend in her wake were instead wilting under the pressure of the Games.
Kildow, five years before the marriage that would change her name to Lindsey Vonn, was not well known in top racing circles, until she earned sixth place in that race, the only top 10 finish by an American woman at those Games.
The teenager was suddenly seen as a savior.
After that first Olympic race, a reporter asked if she was awed to be competing on her sport’s biggest stage at such a young age. She recalled a grade school assignment to write about a life goal.
“I wrote, ‘To make it to the Olympics and win more ski races than any woman ever has,’ ” she said, adding with a wide smile, “But I later changed that to say that I wanted to make it to a bunch of Olympics.”
Close to 16 years and multiple Olympics later, as Vonn, now 33, sat in a Los Angeles studio awaiting yet another major media photo shoot, the 2002 scene was recounted to her. She snickered.
Image Vonn in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Then 17 and known as Lindsey Kildow, she finished sixth in her first Olympic race. Credit Al Bello/Getty Images
“Just thinking big, man,” she said. “Though I’m not sure I saw all the Olympic twists and turns to come. At 17, some things you can’t possibly imagine happening.”
Vonn’s Olympic odyssey has since been relentlessly eventful, a journey that has zigzagged from surprising to harrowing to inspirational to triumphant to devastating.
But as Vonn begins her fourth Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, nothing is more important than this, her last Olympic chapter. She will be among the favorites in the super-G and downhill and a medal contender in the Alpine combined.
“It’s all that matters right now,” she said late last year. “I came into the spotlight at the Olympics. I won a gold medal at the 2010 Olympics that changed my life. It all helps establish a legacy, and now, here’s one more shot.
“That’s what the Olympics can do.”
But the Olympics for Vonn have also sometimes been a quadrennial punch in the gut, too.
She must also confront that fact in South Korea. As much as the Olympics represent some of her happiest times, they also cue some of her most dreaded memories.
Four years after her breakout performance at the 2002 Salt Lake Games, for example, she was expected to win multiple medals at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. During training days before the opening ceremony, Vonn crashed while racing down a mountain at 60 miles per hour, somersaulting until she flew off a jump backward and landed with a chilling thud. She lay on her back in the snow, motionless except for her gasps.
Image Vonn at the Turin Olympics in 2006. She crashed in a training run and somersaulted until she flew off a jump backward and landed with a thud. Vonn thought she had broken her back, ending her career. It turned out she was badly bruised but still able to compete in those Games. Credit Clive Mason/Getty Images
“In the helicopter, the doctors thought I broke my back,” Vonn said, “And I thought: O.K., my career is over.”
But Vonn was only severely bruised. Limping badly and using ski poles as de facto canes, she eventually left the hospital to compete in four events, but her best finish was seventh.
“I was in extreme pain, but it was a good lesson,” she recalled, reclining in the sun of a Los Angeles plaza just before Thanksgiving last year. “With ski racing, it can all end in less than a second. When I accepted that, I knew I didn’t have time to squander one day of training anymore, even in the off-season. I had to push myself year-round to maximize every single race opportunity.”
Not long after, she married Thomas Vonn, a United States ski team Olympian known as a meticulous technician.
Thomas became her manager, gear guru and part-time coach, and together the couple developed a work ethic for Vonn that was unmatched by her peers on and off the snow.
On race days, she adopted a steely resolve that complemented her inherent aggressiveness. In the next five seasons, Vonn was the most dominant racer in the sport, tying the record for most women’s World Cup overall titles (four) and for most season-long event championships (16) by any skier, man or woman.
With a stirring, white-knuckle performance at the 2010 Vancouver Games, she became the first American to win the women’s downhill.
Image In 2010, Vonn became the first American woman to win Olympic gold in the downhill. She has said that Pyeongchang will be her last Games and that she expects to retire after the 2019 season. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
She separated from Thomas Vonn in late 2011, and 15 months of messy divorce negotiations ensued.
Vonn’s skiing remained unrivaled, and she won her fourth overall title in 2012. But as the divorce was being completed in January 2013, she seemed distracted. She missed several races with an illness, then took a monthlong break from the World Cup.
In her first race at the 2013 world championships a month later, one year and one day from the start of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she stumbled as she landed a lengthy jump and vaulted over the tips of her skis, rupturing the cruciate ligament in her right knee. She returned to the slopes after nine months to practice.
Then, one morning in training, she fell at high speed and once again tore the same ligament in her right knee.
She tried desperately to qualify for the Olympics, anyway, before finally bowing out a month before the Sochi Games.
“Those injuries changed the trajectory of my career — changed it forever, basically,” Vonn said last year, subconsciously, or consciously, rubbing her right knee as she spoke. “Just devastating. A very dark moment in my career.”
She sequestered herself at home in Vail, Colo., recovering from a second reconstructive knee surgery. She had also begun dating the golfer Tiger Woods, and going outside became more problematic because she attracted paparazzi looking for Woods.
At first it was too dispiriting to watch the Olympics on television, but she decided to force herself to tune in.
Image Vonn was airlifted out of the 2013 world championships in Schladming, Austria, after tearing up her right knee during a race. She reinjured the knee later in the year. Credit Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“I wanted it to fuel me for the next four years, even if it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” she said. “You watch. You grow stronger. You plan your return.”
The intervening years have been most notable for Vonn’s continued march toward an achievement she set as a goal when she was 7 years old.
Vonn now has 81 World Cup victories, which is 13 more than any other woman in history. She is five wins from catching Ingemar Stenmark, who holds the men’s record of 86 World Cup victories.
Off the slopes, she was able to keep a lower profile after she and Woods announced that they had split in May 2015.
Vonn’s daring, uncompromising racing style, however, which has led to so much of her success, continued to imperil her. In November 2016, on the same Colorado training hill where her 2014 Olympic dreams were derailed, she bounced through a hole in the racecourse and tumbled to the snow.
This time, the humerus bone in Vonn’s upper right arm was gruesomely splintered.
“That was an injury that scared me more than any other because for a long time I couldn’t feel my arm,” Vonn said. “I was terrified it would be permanent.”
The catalog of ski racing injuries that Vonn has sustained and endured in the last two decades is so vast, she struggles to recall them all. They include a broken ankle, multiple hairline fractures of her knee, a badly cut thumb, broken fingers, a concussion, torn knee ligaments and a back and hip so badly bruised that her torso was discolored from her shoulder blade to her knee.
“But waiting for the nerve damage from my broken arm to go away was the worst,” Vonn said. “I remember I had to practice writing the alphabet every day to try to regain the use of my hand.”
It did not, however, keep her out of a racing start gate.
“We used duct tape to attach my pole to my right hand, which was a little bit dangerous, but everything is dangerous for me and it worked,” Vonn said with a laugh.
She returned to the World Cup circuit in 2017 and won the second race she entered.
But the cavalcade of increasingly serious injuries has changed Vonn’s outlook this winter. Staying healthy enough to make it to Pyeongchang has become an overriding priority that has guided every decision she has made in the last 12 months.
While her racing colleagues spent months training last summer in New Zealand and Chile, Vonn reduced her time in the Southern Hemisphere by 50 percent to minimize the risk of a fall in what are often unpredictable snow conditions.
Even at home this winter in Colorado, if the snow surface for training has been sketchy or irregular, Vonn has stayed off skis. In December, when fog reduced the visibility before a World Cup race in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Vonn, who had jarred a back vertebrae in a recent race, decided not to compete.
Famous for a grueling on-snow training schedule, Vonn has scaled back her time slamming through gates, which is always a perilous routine. She has not, however, scaled back on her almost daily five-hour strength and conditioning workouts in the gym.
“I’ve avoided some races and done some things I never would have done in the past,” Vonn said. “But that’s because the entire focus has been on being ready for the Olympics.”
Image Vonn in a World Cup super-G race last month in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. “Not to sound arrogant, I’ve already done almost everything I ever set out to do,” she said. Credit Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
If she has been more out of sight in the greater ski racing community, she is not out of mind.
“Maybe some girls have forgotten how great Vonn is, but I haven’t,” said Sofia Goggia of Italy, Vonn’s biggest rival in the Olympic downhill this month. “She has always been one of my heroes. None of us have done what she has done. Who has?”
Vonn’s American teammate Mikaela Shiffrin, who won a gold medal in her first event in Pyeongchang and is expected to compete against Vonn in at least two other races, said, “When you’re as good as Lindsey has been, you don’t forget how to go fast.”
Vonn expects to retire after the 2019 ski season.
She has talked in the past about wanting to have a family when she stopped racing, but late last year, when asked if children were still in her plans, she put up her right hand like a cop stopping traffic.
“Slow down there,” she said with a hearty laugh.
When she was 17, Lindsey Kildow sociably giggled, raced with her hair flapping behind her in a long ponytail tied with sparkling ribbons, and passionately talked about her racing future as if it would be endless.
Lindsey Vonn, much closer to her career’s end than its start, still prides herself on being amiable, but she unquestionably tends to be more cautious and watchful. Her ski racing wardrobe is chosen by her many high-powered sponsors. When she talks about what is next in her career, she is wary not to project too far.
“I’m not old, but I’m definitely older,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “Maybe the thing I’m most afraid of is running out of time before I reach everything I set out to accomplish.
“Although, not to sound arrogant, I’ve already done almost everything I ever set out to do.”
But there will be one more Olympics.
”I don’t need to win in Pyeongchang,” Vonn said, “but I would love to win in Pyeongchang.
“So that’s the thing. I don’t need it, but I want it.”
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Vonn, who nearly wiped out in the final stretch but recovered to complete it in 1:21.49, was already out of medal contention by then. She was a favorite coming in because she is especially adept at gliding, which this course required.
Ledecka’s run pushed Vonn down to a tie for sixth, 0.38 behind Ledecka.
The final stretch cost Vonn the chance at the podium.
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Vonn completed the first three-quarters of the run in 1:03.8 compared with the 1:03.95 that Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein, who won bronze, later posted. Then Vonn completed the final stretch of the race in 17.69, while Weirather completed it in 17.27.
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During that last stretch Vonn lost her balance as the course turned sharply left. Her right ski slipped from under her center of gravity, and her left hip was inches from the snow. Vonn recovered and finished, but precious fractions of a second were lost.
In a few days, Ledecka will gain another distinction. She will become the first person to compete in skiing and snowboarding at the same Games when she enters the snowboard giant slalom.
Winter Olympics 2018 Lindsey Vonn: 'There's nothing special about me. I just ski fast' The American has never held back, whether with her aggression on the piste or her criticism of the US president. Now she is set for what is likely to be her final Olympics Lindsey Vonn: ‘No matter what is thrown at me, the weather or media or anything, I feel like I can handle it.’ Photograph: Harry How/Getty Images
On Saturday, Lindsey Vonn will return to the Olympic stage for the first time since she won downhill gold in Vancouver eight years ago and carved out a place in US sports history, becoming the first American woman to win alpine skiing’s marquee event at the Games. The intervening years have looked more like a moguls course than a smooth ski slope for the 33-year-old, who has dealt with plenty of bumps on her way back to the Olympics. Yet she remains a risk-taker, continuously willing to put everything on the line for what she loves and what she believes in, an audacity that just could lead her back to the top of the Olympic podium.
A series of right knee injuries and two subsequent surgeries sidelined Vonn ahead of the Sochi Games and prevented her from defending her downhill title four years ago. While ailments and age have forced Vonn to adjust her training – she limits her time on the mountain and places greater emphasis on warming up to protect her body from further wear and tear – the looming threat of injury hasn’t caused her to adopt more cautious race tactics.
“I think that’s what has allowed me to have so much success in my career, the fact that I’m willing to risk everything every time I’m in the starting gate, but it’s also been the reason I’ve crashed so many times” she told the Guardian last month. “We’re going so fast and we’re pushing the limits all the time. Things can go wrong and you get injured, but I feel like that’s just part of the job description. When I’m in the starting gate I want to win, and I’m going to put it on the line. If I crash, so be it, but at least I’ve given 110%.”
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Vonn’s ski style has always been somewhat unusual, even when she was growing up in Minnesota, where she learned her craft on a small hill known as ‘The Bump’ at the Buck Hill Ski Area. Several instructors tried to fix what they thought were flaws, but the novice skier was encouraged by then-coach Erich Sailer to maintain her unconventional technique.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some have questioned Vonn’s patriotism after she was critical of Donald Trump. Photograph: Philipp Guelland/EPA
“I just skied really inside,” she explained. “I was really lateral and I’m pretty tall for a ski racer and everyone thought that was a weakness. But my coach told me it wasn’t, that it was actually a strength, so I didn’t change it. Eventually, in downhill, that became one of my strongest attributes, how I can lean into a turn and get a different angulation than most athletes.”
Vonn used that technique to schuss her way to the top of her sport. She’s one of the most decorated ski racers ever, having accrued more World Cup victories (81) than any other woman in alpine skiing history. And she’s just five wins away from tying the overall record of 86, set by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. Still, World Cup titles carry little weight with the average American sports fan, who typically pays attention to alpine skiing once every four years. In the US, an Olympic athlete’s success is typically tied to his or her medal count. And prolific stars such as Michael Phelps, who won 23 golds in his career, have skewed the perception of what it means to be successful at the Olympics.
“We definitely have been spoiled by Michael,” Vonn said. “But in ski racing there are a lot more variables. There’s wind, there’s changing snow conditions, there’s what shirt number you have. There are so many things that could potentially inhibit you from getting an Olympic medal that may have nothing to do with how good of a skier you are or how well you perform.”
Lindsey Jacobellis shouldn't be remembered as a serial loser but she will be Read more
Vonn has also felt the weight of the American public’s expectations off the slopes, most recently for comments she made about US president Donald Trump in an interview with CNN back in December. For most Olympic athletes, whose popularity is often rooted in patriotism, wading into political waters can be a frightening prospect, one that has the potential to scare off the sponsorship opportunities that crop up once a quadrennium and vanish shortly after the cauldron is extinguished. For Vonn, whose star power is predicated on her near-universal appeal, the risk is even greater. Yet that didn’t discourage her from broaching the topic.
“I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president. … I want to represent our country well, and I don’t think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that,” she said in the interview. She also revealed that she did not plan on joining the rest of Team USA for the traditional post-Olympics trip to the White House. Vonn faced backlash after those comments but remained steadfast in her beliefs, which she said don’t make her any less American.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vonn has 81 World Cup titles to her name. Photograph: Lisi Niesner/EPA
“Everyone has different opinions, that’s what makes America great,” she said. “I think if you love your country that makes you patriotic.”
Vonn will represent the United States at the Games for a fourth and likely final time in Pyeongchang. Her program starts with the super-G on Saturday morning in the South Korean mountains (Friday night in the US) before next week’s downhill and alpine combined. Recent World Cup victories, including two downhill wins earlier this month, prove she hasn’t lost her edge.
“It’s been eight years and I’ve worked my butt off to be able to come into these Olympics in good shape and in a good position to get as many medals as possible,” she said.
Vonn is all too familiar with how swiftly medal hopes can be quashed, which is why she has taken extra precautions to remain healthy in Pyeongchang, often donning gloves indoors and a surgical mask to stave off illness. And then there are the variables she can’t control, including the tempestuous winds that have disrupted the alpine skiing program in South Korea. But she is better equipped to cope with the unknowns than many of her younger competitors.
“With age comes a lot of experience,” she said. “For a lot of athletes, this is their first time under the pressure of the Olympics and having a lot of expectations put on their shoulders, and I’ve dealt with that before. I’ve already won the Olympics, so I’m not under pressure to do something I’ve never done before. No matter what is thrown at me, the weather or media or anything, I feel like I can handle it.”
Still, Vonn knows her age will prevent her from continuing in her sport much longer. Retirement is imminent – likely within the next season or two, which she hopes is enough time to break Stenmark’s record – but she plans to compete as long as she’s physically capable. “I love what I do so much I don’t really want to stop doing it,” she said. “I feel like my body is going to tell me that I need to retire more so than my mind.”
Until then, she’s going to keep risking it all because that’s who she is.
“There’s nothing really special about me. I just ski fast.”
It's onto the downhill for Lindsey Vonn. The American skiing star failed to medal in the women's super-G on Saturday in South Korea -- or Friday night for those of you watching at home in the United States -- after making a slight bobble on the bottom of the course and skiing off line into some soft snow.
And in men's figure skating, Nathan Chen delivered history, landing five of his six quad jumps land the highest score of the night in the free skate. Alas, he finished off the podium, in fifth, with his 17th-place showing from Thursday night's short program proving too much to overcome for a medal.
For highlights of all of Friday night's primetime NBC drama, check out the recap from our live blog:
Medal Tracker
Medal Tracker PyeongChang 2018 Medal Tracker Country Gold Silver Bronze TOTAL GER 9 2 4 15 NOR 6 8 5 19 NED 6 5 2 13 USA 5 1 2 8 CAN 4 5 4 13 SWE 4 2 0 6 AUT 3 2 4 9 FRA 3 2 2 7 SUI 2 4 1 7 ITA 2 1 3 6 KOR 2 0 1 3 JPN 1 5 3 9 CZE 1 2 2 5 BLR 1 0 0 1 CHN 0 3 1 4 OAR 0 2 6 8 AUS 0 2 1 3 SVK 0 2 0 2 SLO 0 1 0 1 FIN 0 0 3 3 ESP 0 0 2 2 GBR 0 0 2 2 LIE 0 0 1 1 KAZ 0 0 1 1 See More
