Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn (born October 18, 1984, St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American Alpine skier who has won four women’s World Cup overall championships (2008–10 and 2012) and became, in 2019, the first woman to win 82 World Cup races. She also claimed three Olympic Winter Games medals and eight world championships medals during her international racing career. She retired in 2019, but five years later she announced her return to the sport. Vonn secured a spot on the U.S. national team at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, but a week before the event she ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee after crashing during a downhill race. Despite the severity of the injury, which can take up to a year to recover from, Vonn insisted that she would still participate in the Olympics. However, during the downhill event, she crashed and had to be airlifted off the course. It was soon revealed that she had broken her left leg.

Early career

Lindsey Vonn was born Lindsey Kildow and was known by that name in the early years of her athletic career. She burst onto the international skiing 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 capture 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 Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) junior world ski championships and again took silver in downhill one year later at the U.S. championships.

2006 to 2009

Kildow was a medal favorite going into the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, but she crashed during a downhill training run and was airlifted to a hospital. Kildow, who said at the time that she thought she had broken her back and that her career was over, returned and within two days was competing despite the injury. She did not win a medal, but her courageous showing earned her the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award. Kildow recovered in time to win silver medals in downhill and supergiant slalom (super-G) at the 2007 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. Later that year she married American skier Thomas Vonn and thereafter used Vonn as her surname. (The couple divorced in 2013.)

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Britannica Quiz

American Sports Nicknames

Lindsey Vonn rebounded from injury once more and had the best year of her career during the 2007–08 skiing season. She earned six World Cup victories to finish the season with 1,403 points, more than 200 points ahead of her nearest competitor, and captured her first overall World Cup title. At the season’s penultimate competition, 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 World Cup downhill title, the first American woman to do so since Street in 1996. Her momentum continued into the next year, as she won gold medals in the downhill and supergiant slalom at the 2009 world championships, the World Cup supergiant slalom title, and her second World Cup downhill and overall titles.

2010 to 2016

At the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Vonn won a gold medal in downhill and a bronze in the super-G. She followed her Olympic exploits with a third consecutive World Cup overall title in March 2010. In addition, she captured downhill, super-G, and combined World Cup championships in the 2009–10 season, which brought her career total to 33 titles and broke Bode Miller’s U.S. record. In the 2010–11 season, Vonn repeated as World Cup champion in each of the three disciplines she had won the previous season. She won the first giant slalom race of the 2011–12 season to become the fifth female skier to win a race in each of the five World Cup Alpine disciplines. Later that season she captured her fourth overall World Cup title.

In January 2013 Vonn crashed during a super-G run at the Alpine world championships and tore two ligaments in her knee, ending her 2012–13 season. (Nevertheless, she managed to accumulate enough points during the season to win her sixth straight downhill World Cup title five weeks later.) A slow recovery forced her to withdraw from the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics shortly before they were scheduled to begin. She returned to racing in December 2014 and one month later won her 63rd career World Cup race to break the record for most all-time World Cup victories for a female skier. She captured World Cup season titles in downhill and super-G that year and finished third overall in the World Cup standings. Vonn then took the super-G bronze medal in the 2015 world championships. In March 2016, shortly after winning her 20th career World Cup title (in the downhill discipline), she fractured her leg and withdrew from the remainder of the 2015–16 season.

Retirement and return

Vonn returned in January 2017 and in the following month won a downhill bronze medal at the world championships, becoming (at age 32) the oldest woman to medal in the history of that event. At the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Vonn won a bronze medal in the downhill event. She won another downhill bronze at the 2019 world championships and retired from competitive skiing after that event. At the time Vonn held the record (82) for most women’s World Cup wins; she was surpassed by fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin in 2023.

Explore Britannica Premium!

The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.

SUBSCRIBE

In April 2024 Vonn had knee replacement surgery that involved replacing part of the bone in her right knee with titanium pieces. Some seven months later Vonn announced that she would end her retirement and return to skiing as a member of the U.S. national team. In December she competed in her first World Cup race, finishing 14th in the super-G. The 41-year-old Vonn made history in December 2025, when she became the oldest downhill skier to win a World Cup race. It was also her first World Cup win in some seven years. She registered another first-place finish a month later, bringing her total to 84.

2026 Olympics

With those victories and several other strong finishes, Vonn qualified for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. However, a week before the event she ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee while competing in a downhill race. Despite the severity of the injury, Vonn decided to participate in the Olympics. However, during the downhill event, she caught her arm on a gate and crashed. Vonn was airlifted off the mountain, and several days later she revealed that she had broken her tibia (shinbone). Vonn insisted that the crash resulted from a simple mistake and was unrelated to her ACL injury.

Other activities

In 2016 Vonn published Strong Is the New Beautiful: Embrace Your Natural Beauty, Eat Clean, and Harness Your Power (written with Sarah Toland). She later hosted the reality show The Pack (2020), in which dogs and their owners competed in various challenges. Lindsey Vonn: The Final Season (2019) is a TV documentary.