Lindsey Vonn Biography

Lindsey Vonn was for a time the most celebrated American ski racer of her era. She retired in 2019 after a stellar career, and then made a stirring return that ended in a crash in the 2026 Olympic downhill.

Lindsey Vonn grew up in Apple Valley, Minnesota and began skiing at age 2; when she was 11 she moved to Colorado with her family to train at Ski Club Vail. At age 17 she qualified for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, finishing a promising sixth in the combined event.

She went on to become one of America’s most celebrated skiers. A specialist in speed events, she won over 75 World Cup victories from 2008 to 2018, mostly in downhill and Super-G races. She was so dominant that she won back-to-back-to-back overall World Cup Championships in 2008, 2009 and 2010, finished second in 2011, then won again in 2012. She was the World Cup’s #1-ranked downhill racer every year from 2008-2016 — except in 2014, when she tore the ACL in her right knee.

Lindsay Vonn had less luck in the Olympics: she was injured in practice just before the Turin Olympics of 2006 and didn’t win a medal, and in 2010 she suffered a pre-Olympic shin injury. But that year she recovered to win a gold medal in the women’s downhill and a bronze in the Super-G. After missing the Sochi Olympics entirely in 2014 due to injury, she bounced back to win a bronze medal in the downhill at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Lindsay Vonn announced her pending retirement in an Instagram post on February 1, 2019, saying “My body is broken beyond repair and it isn’t letting me have the final season I dreamed of.” She won a bronze medal in downhill at the World Championships two weeks later in what seemed like her last race.

But! In 2024, after successful knee replacement surgery, Vonn returned to racing. In December 2025 she won the women’s downhill World Cup race in St. Moritz, Switzerland, making her at 41 the oldest World Cup downhill winner ever. She ruptured the ACL in her knee during a race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on January 30, 2026, but soon declared her intention to compete in the Olympics anyway. She gave it a try, but crashed badly only a few seconds into her Olympic downhill race, again (apparently) ending her racing career.

Vonn’s career totals included 83 World Cup wins, three Olympic medals and seven world championship medals. Her 82 World Cup wins through 2019 were at the time the most ever for a woman (just four behind the all-time record of 86 wins held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark), but that record was later surpassed by the 100+ World Cup wins of her fellow American racer, Mikaela Shiffrin.