Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Caroline Vonn (née Kildow; born October 18, 1984) is an American alpine ski racer with the United States Ski Team. She has won four overall World Cup championships – one of only two female skiers to do so, along with Annemarie Moser-Pröll – with three consecutive titles in 2008, 2009 and 2010, plus another in 2012. Vonn won the gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics, the first ever in the event for an American woman. She has also won five consecutive World Cup season titles in the downhill discipline, four consecutive titles in Super G, and three consecutive titles in the combined as of 2012.

Vonn is one of five women to have won World Cup races in all five disciplines of alpine skiing – downhill, super G, giant slalom, slalom, and super combined – and has won 57 World Cup races in her career through December 2012. Only two skiers have more World Cup victories in their careers, Austrian Annemarie Moser-Pröll with 62 and Swede Ingemar Stenmark with 86, both retired from active racing. With her Olympic gold and bronze medals, two World Championship gold medals in 2009 (plus three silver medals in 2007 / 2011), and four overall World Cup titles, Vonn has become the most successful American skier in the history of alpine skiing.

Vonn received the Laureus World Sports Awards Sportswoman of the Year for 2010. She was also honored again as the USOC's sportswoman of the year for 2010.