Lindsey Vonn

Background

Lindsey Vonn was born Lindsey Caroline Kildow on October 18, 1984, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to lawyer couples Alan Lee Kildow and Linda Krohn Anne. She is one among five siblings with two sisters, Karin and Laura, as well as two brothers, Dylan and Reed. Vonn was raised in the metropolitan area of the Twin Cities in Burnsville, Minnesota. From her father’s side, she has Irish ancestry while her mother has German and Norwegian ancestry. Vonn had already been skiing since two years old and moved into Burnsville’s Buck Hill Erich Sailer’s development program. At nine years old, she met her role model, the Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, who had a great impression on little Vonn and would later become her mentor.

Her international fame started when Vonn became the first American female skier to win the slalom race at the 1999 Trofeo Topolino competition in Italy at 14 years old. She grabbed a silver medal in the downhill discipline of the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) junior world ski championships in 2003, snatching another silver medal at the U.S. championships in 2004. Vonn was airlifted to the hospital in 2006 after crashing during a downhill training run for the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy. Nevertheless, she returned two days later and competed despite her injuries, earning her the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. Following her recovery, she won two silver medals in super-G and downhill at the 2007 World Championship, but Vonn tore her right knee’s anterior cruciate ligament during a training session, thus having to retire early from the season.

In what was dubbed the best year of her career, Vonn earned six World Cup victories and her first overall World Cup title between 2007 and 2008. She broke the U.S. record previously set by Street and Daron Rahlves at the season’s penultimate competition, winning her 10th career World Cup downhill race to become the first American woman to clinch the achievement since 1996.