From Lindsey Kildow to Lindsey Vonn: the legendary life and career of one of the most successful athletes of all time

Here is the summary of the life and career of the woman who, for now, is the most successful skier in the history of the Alpine Ski World Cup and one of the most popular and successful all-rounders ever.

Sunday 10 February 2019 14 minutes reading time

Born October 18, 1984 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Lindsey Caroline Kildow, daughter of Linda Anne and Alan Lee, grew up in Burnsville, in the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area. He put his two-year-old skis in Buck Hill, Minnesota, for the first time. His first ski instructor was his paternal grandfather Don in Milton, Wisconsin. The first who believed in her was the great downhillist Picabo Street, her idol, whom she met at the age of ten. Lindsey began training in Colorado when her parents went on vacation until she finally moved to Vail with her family in the late nineties to compete for the Vail Ski Club. He began to take part in prestigious competitions such as the Topolino Trophy, winning the slalom in 1999. In November of the same year he took part in the first FIS and Nor-Am races, in the North American circuit he immediately got the first podium after a month and the following year the first of three races won. Meanwhile, he made his debut at the Junior World Championships, for now without winning medals and, on November 18, 2000, in the World Cup at 16 and a month, in the slalom of Park City. The first points collected in the super-G in Val d'Isere December 15, 2001, which is twenty-sixth, he even debuts at the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City 2002 in which is incredibly sixth in combination. At the junior world championships in 2003 he is silver downhill (in front of the one who for many years was his great rival in his homeland, Julia Mancuso), to those in 2004 he is still silver downhill, behind what will become his best friend in Circus Rosa, Maria Riesch, and giant bronze, also won by Riesch. Before this world championship, he won his first top ten in the World Cup in the two runs of Cortina d'Ampezzo, fifth in the one on 17 January and the third, his first podium, in the one on the following day. On December 3, 2004, he took his first victory in the Cup in the first descent of Lake Louise, in the Canadian resort will win a total of 18 races, 14 descents and 4 super-G. He made his debut at the Senior World Championships in Santa Caterina Valfurva, where he had to settle for two quarters of downhill and combined places. In the 2005-2006 season he won three Cup races, including the first super-G, then at San Sicario during the Olympic descent he was the victim of a terrifying fall which caused injuries all over the place, all entangled at the start of the race two days later, he classifies himself miraculously in the eighth and even pisses off, a sign of how much hunger for victory he already has in those years. Another three wins in the Cup in 2006-2007, including the disputed super-G, look a bit 'at San Sicario, and then finally wins his first medals at the World Cup, but this we will see later in the summary of his palmares, we add only that must skip the last month of the season due to a small injury to the anterior crusader of the right knee during a slalom workout. It is in the winter of 2007-2008 that his legend begins: on 29 September 2007 he married Thomas Vonn, former good but not exceptional skier of the US national team, and on the FIS lists he abandoned the name Lindsey Kildow, with whom he was known until that moment, to become Lindsey Vonn, as it is universally known since then, name and surname that will no longer abandon despite the separation before, in 2011, and the divorce later, in 2013, by her husband. It will be a coincidence but from the wedding onwards his agonistic life is turned like a glove: he wins four of the five successive World Cups overall (2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, that of 2011 loses it by a whisker, 3 points, from Maria Riesch due to cancellation of the last giant of Lenzerheide with relative controversy, only period of attrition with the German) winning 11 races in 2009-2010 and 12 in 2011-2012 (in the second case with a total of 1980 points in the final classification, in that absolute female record time!), 8 descent cups (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016), 5 of superG (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015) and 3 of combined (2010, 2011 and 2012) for a total of 20 trophies, big or small, crystal, absolute records including men. She is one of the seven women to have won in all five Alpine skiing specialties that award a trophy: 43 runs (passed the 36 record of Annemarie Proell on January 23, 2016 in Cortina d'Ampezzo), 28 superG, 4 giants , 2 slalom and 5 combined for a total of 82, absolute record (the one of 62 belonging to Proell always beat him on 19 January 2015 in the super-G in Cortina, where he won 12 times). In four Olympic Games it was gold downhill and bronze in super-G in Vancouver 2010 and bronze downhill at PyeongChang 2018, in seven World Championships it was silver downhill and superG at Are 2007, gold downhill and superG at Val d'Isere 2009, silver downhill at Garmisch-Partenkirchen 2011, bronze in super-G at Vail / Beaver Creek 2015 and bronze downhill at St. Moritz 2017. However, it was the Mondiali, in particular those of Schladming 2013, that kicked off his ordeal of injuries: in the super-G in the Austrian town of Styria the right knee was destroyed, breaking the anterior crusader, the medial collateral and the tibial plate. He attempted a hasty return to be able to participate in the 2014 Sochi Games but had to give it up due to two more injuries to his right knee. Back in 2014-2015 winning 8 Cup races and finishing third in the overall standings, it improves the following winter with 9 races won and the second place in the general but in the last month and a half can not contrast the one who will win the crystal ball , Lara Gut, due to a microfracture in the left knee in Soldeu's combo. New injury in November 2016, arm of the right arm fractured, back to compete in January and almost immediately wins the descent of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His last great season is the following one, with the Olympic bronze cited above but also with five races won in the Cup, the 82nd and last of which is that of March 14, 2018 in the pre-season descent of Are, the day after conquers his 137 Â° and last podium in the Cup coming third in super-G. The following fall Lindsey announces that the current one is his last season, but then he is injured again at the knee and then he wants to continue until Lake Louise season 2019-2020 to have three more chances to break the record of 86 wins at the Ingemar Stenmark World Cup. But the return is more complicated than expected, so much so that he has to wait until last month to be able to return to the race in Cortina, where he is fifteenth and ninth (his 214th place among the top ten in the Cup) in the descents January 18 and 19, but then goes into the super-G of 20 that will go down in history as his 395th and last race in the World Cup. Incredible champion, sometimes capricious diva like the biggest stars of Hollywood and a well-rounded character even in terms of gossip (after the wedding she had famous boyfriends, all Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers in history, up to the current , PK Subban, Canadian hockeist defender of the Nashville Predators), also famous his appearance in Law & Order and his doing the verse to Sharon Stone of Basic Instinct with white micro-dress, cigarette in the mouth and legs open, Lindsey was above all one of the most winning women and the biggest money machines in the history of sport. He was upset before the PyeongChang Games when he claimed not to compete for a US president, Donald Trump, from whom he did not feel represented. He has competed with many of the strongest in the history, from Janica Kostelic to Anja Paerson, Michaela Dorfmeister, Maria Riesch, Tina Maze, Julia Mancuso, Anna Fenninger (later unwittingly Veith for marriage when almost all of his achievements, as opposed to Lindsey , won them unmarried) in Lara Gut, and beaten them several times, which makes the splendor of his incredible palmares even greater. Good life without skiing, Lindsey and, I recommend, no jokes and try not to further abuse your body!

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