Imagine you’ve won everything there is to win in your career – overall World Cup, World Championship titles, Olympic gold. You’re one of the most popular stars in your sport, and you’ve long since made enough money. So what does Lindsey Vonn do?
She’s coming back! In the fall of 2024, at the age of 40 and five years after her retirement, Lindsey Vonn made her comeback!
Who is the grande dame of skiing?
Her career, with all its great successes and serious falls, could fill an entire book – and in the meantime it has. But how did her career begin, how much money has she made from skiing, who has she been in relationships with and who is her current boyfriend?
The great Lindsey Vonn career successes & comeback 2024
The Lindsay Vonn career began on Buck Hill, a 93-meter-high bracket on which she first stood on skis at the age of two. Her father Alan Kildow recognized his daughter’s talent early on, so the whole family moved to Vail when Lindsay was eleven.
At the age of 15, Lindsey Caroline Vonn had already come second in the US downhill championships, and on November 18, 2000, she got to sample the World Cup atmosphere for the first time. However, she missed out on qualifying for the second round in the slalom in Aspen.
The international eye was first drawn to the tall blonde at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, when she achieved 6th place in the combined event. However, it would take another two years before she made it to the podium in the big ski world – she finally achieved this in the 2003/04 season.
On January 17, 2004, on the Tofana in Cortina d’Ampezzo, one of the most difficult downhill runs in the world, she raced to third place, achieving her first World Cup podium finish.
It was the beginning of something big. It was the athletic birth of a new ski superstar!
But it was only in the 2007/2008 season that she really took off. In that season, she celebrated five downhill victories, often with a large lead, and won the downhill World Cup for the first time – and that was already in the third-last race of the season.
Lindsey Vonn: height, skis, place of residence
She won a hail of medals at the World Championships (eight in total, two of them gold) and Olympic Games (three, 1x gold), plus the big globe of the overall World Cup (four times in a row from 2008 to 2010 and in 2012) and over a dozen small globes in the respective disciplines (16 – eight of which were for the downhill World Cup alone).
Her seasons from 2008 to 2011 were outstanding, when she broke all records and (almost won everything): for example, she won the overall World Cup and the downhill World Cup three times in a row. During this period, she also won gold medals at the 2009 World Championships and the 2010 Olympics.
But then she had a fateful crash at the 2013 World Ski Championships in Schladming. The cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament injuries she sustained were so severe that she was never able to return to her former form as the dominant skier.
In the following years, she was repeatedly set back by further falls and injuries. She was on the podium as often as she was in hospital after crashes. The extract from her medical records sounds alarming: broken arms, cruciate ligament tears, tibial plateau and ankle fractures are just the most serious of Lindsey Vonn’s many injuries.
Nevertheless, she achieved something historic: on January 19, 2015, she surpassed the 35-year record of Annemarie Moser-Pröll with her 63rd victory and thus took the lead in the all-time list of the women’s World Cup. In the end, she had a total of 82 World Cup victories.
Even though superstar Mikaela Shiffrin’s records have long since been surpassed, Lindsey Vonn is one of the greatest of all time in skiing history!
In early 2019, she put an end to her outstanding career, plagued by injuries: On February 10, Vonn bid farewell to the big ski stage – at the World Championships in Are with a bronze medal in the super-G. With her eighth World Championship medal overall.
2024 the big Vonn comeback
Lindsey couldn’t sit still for long. She was always looking for new challenges. In January 2023, for example, she became the first woman to race down the Streif in Kitzbühel – with a dramatic descent that was, of course, perfectly staged for social media.
On November 14, 2024, she announced: I’m coming back! She was gripped by ambition shortly after her 40th birthday, and not everyone was positive about her comeback.
But as soon as she was back on the slopes on December 21, she was back in the World Cup points with 14th place. Almost everyone – fans, experts and maybe even a little bit of herself – was surprised by her strong performance.
She managed to come in sixth in St. Anton, and it was as if she had never been away. Her critics have now become veeeeery quiet, because they know: there are still big competitions coming up in 2024/25, and they are exactly Lindsey’s thing!
The greatest Lindsey Vonn records
- Vonn has won 20 crystal balls – 4 of them the big ones, plus 16 in the discipline rankings.
- She is the only athlete to date to have won a discipline World Cup six times in a row (downhill – 2008 to 2013).
- Across all genders, she has won the most discipline World Cup titles (16). Ingemar Stenmark follows with 15, and in the women’s category, Vreni Schneider and Mikaela Shiffrin with eleven each.
- In 2012, she managed to win four of the six crystal globes in one season for the second time, something only Hermann Maier has managed to do otherwise (1999/2000 and 2000/01)
- November 2012: Vonn won three races on three consecutive days for the third time – also a first in the World Cup.
- She won World Cup races in all 5 disciplines.
- As of January 2025: 43 victories in downhill and 28 in super-G are the top scores in both disciplines.
- She won 18 times in Lake Louise, including 14 times in downhill.
- She managed the World Cup speed double (balls in downhill and super-G) five times.
- Vonn won the downhill World Cup six times in a row, from 2018 to 2013 – and in 2013 she didn’t even take part in the last three races!
- Vonn is the only person to have managed to win the downhill and super-G globes in five seasons, thus achieving the so-called speed double.
Vonn’s successes: medals and globes
- 4 overall World Cup victories (2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012)
- 82 World Cup victories (43 in downhill, 28 in super-G, 5 in super combined, 2 in slalom, 4 in giant slalom
- 137 individual podium finishes
- 1x Olympic gold and 1x Olympic bronze
- 2x gold, 3x silver and 3x bronze at the World Championships
- 2x silver and 3x bronze at junior world championships
Lindsey Vonn: net worth, real estate deals & prize money
One of the most successful skiers of all time, plus world champion and Olympic champion. A sports icon like that will have earned a lot. But how big are Lindsey Vonn’s assets?
According to relevant US media, Lindsey Vonn’s assets are estimated at around 15 million dollars.
What is interesting is that the largest share of Lindsey Vonn’s assets comes not from the prize money she has won in her sporting career, but from sponsorship and advertising deals. The prize money in the Alpine Ski World Cup is rather small compared to other sports. Even the darts prize money is higher than that of the ski stars in some tournaments, when they race down the mountain at over 100 km/h on two thin boards.
However, Vonn was a perfect testimonial for the advertising industry due to her success. Red Bull recognized her potential – both visually and athletically – very early on and offered her a lucrative contract as early as 2008. She has achieved all the major successes of her skiing career wearing her Red Bull helmet.
But the Vonn fortune is not made up solely of the income from the multi-million Red Bull contract, but also from many other advertising partnerships.
For example, she has an equipment contract with Under Armour, and her ski brand has been Head since 2009. The switch from Rossignol to Head earned her a million dollars at the time, rumor has it.
She describes herself as an entrepreneur and since the end of her career in 2019, this has been evident in all sorts of ways:
In addition to fitness videos, she also founded the “Lindsey Vonn Foundation” and has already published her autobiography – with the German title “Hoch hinaus”. In the American original, the title is “Rise”.
She is also a frequent ambassador for major events – most recently for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. She served as a TV expert for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Lindsey Vonn has invested large sums in real estate:
- In 2014, Lindsey spent $3.85 million on a house in Vail. She offered this house for sale in 2019 for $6 million and lowered the price to $5 million in 2020. In July 2020, she finally accepted $4.8 million.
- In 2016, Lindsey paid $3.55 million for a house in West Hollywood, California. She sold the house in 2018 for $3.65 million.
- In 2017, she paid $2.6 million for a house in Sherman Oaks, California. In March 2020, she sold the property for $3 million.
- Vonn and ex-boyfriend P.K. Subban together paid $6.76 million for a house in Beverly Hills in May 2020. He kept the house after they broke up, and she received a severance package worth millions.
Who is Lindsey Vonn’s boyfriend?
What about Lindsey Vonn’s boyfriend? If you follow the American a little, you know that there has been one or the other man in her life in recent years, and the media was only too happy to follow these stories!
In 2007, Lindsey Kildow became Lindsey Vonn when she married former ski racer Thomas Vonn. He was not only her husband, but also her mentor, trainer and even took on the first management activities, such as coordinating press inquiries and was always at her side at official events.
But the marriage with Thomas Vonn did not last long – and since then there have been many other Lindsey Vonn boyfriends.
The most famous was golf legend Tiger Woods! The two became the dream couple of sports and were together until 2015. After the end of the relationship with Tiger Woods, she said: “I think it’s always difficult to date someone in the public eye, and I’ve always been a very open person. But I had to learn that some things are not meant for the public.”
The two are said to still be friends today, so they obviously didn’t part on bad terms back then. A little later, Lindsey Vonn had a boyfriend again who comes from the world of sports: US ice hockey star P.K. Subban. It seemed serious, there were even wedding rumors. However, the two have not married, and Lindsey Vonn has been single since 2020.
But whether there is a secret Lindsey Vonn boyfriend in the background, whom she keeps hidden from the curious public, is not known.
Maybe Diego Osorio is the secret boyfriend? He is a Spanish actor who is also a successful entrepreneur. There have been a few public appearances together – but is he really Lindsey Vonn’s boyfriend? Only the two of them know that.
In any case, there is no mention of a possible boyfriend or partner on her social media profiles. So the best Lindsey Vonn friend is her dog Leo…
Lindsey Vonn family with four siblings: her mother died in 2022
But Lindsey Vonn is a family person even without a partner by her side.
It was in 2022 when Lindsey lost her mother, who died of ALS. Lindsey had a close relationship with her mother throughout her life.
Adding to this tragedy, her grandmother and dog died that same year.
Contact with her father, Alan Kildow, was non-existent for a long time. For a long time, she accused him of only being interested in her skiing career and to be able to benefit from it himself. However, the two are now on very good terms again.
Lindsey Vonn also has two brothers and two sisters. She is particularly close to her sisters Laura and Karin, as joint vacations and “everyday” photos on Instagram show.
That was the great Vonn & Höfl-Riesch friendship
Anyone who has followed the women’s alpine ski circus over the last two decades will have noticed that Lindsey Vonn and Maria Höfl-Riesch were not only great rivals on the slopes, but also close friends.
The two ski icons have known each other since they were teenagers – even then they were racing against each other in junior competitions. Their friendship was so close that Lindsey was invited to Maria’s family’s Christmas dinner every year over the Christmas holidays. She didn’t want to fly home to the US during the short World Cup break, and she didn’t want to be alone in a hotel room either.
However, the Vonn/Höfl-Riesch friendship was repeatedly put to the test over the years – because both wanted to win the overall World Cup.
The 2010/11 season was a case in point. Rumors arose that Vonn was not using the ski boots of her official supplier for the slalom. These rumors were later confirmed, and Höfl-Riesch later stated in her biography that she felt lied to and confronted her friend about it. Vonn, however, only replied that this was not her business.
There was radio silence, and the two ladies did not even greet each other from then on. The frosty relationship between Lindsey Vonn and Maria Höfl-Riesch became even more intense during the 2011 World Cup race. Höfl-Riesch won this.
That put an end to the close Vonn/Höfl-Riesch relationship. It was only after Lindsey made her divorce public that the two “piste buddies” started to get closer again. But it never went back to the way it was before.
In 2017, they were seen together on vacation in Mexico, but since then things have been quiet around the two. D
Lindsey, the tennis fan: friends with Federer
Lindsey Vonn has a second great passion for sports besides skiing: tennis!
She plays herself – mainly in the summer during her off-season – for fun and also for training purposes. But she also gets a kick out of watching tennis live, whether on TV or in person. She has been a guest at Wimbledon several times, as well as at the US Open in New York.
She used to be a big fan of Roger Federer, but in the meantime, the two sports giants have also got to know each other personally and are even friends. This is shown by several Instagram postings by Lindsey Vonn & Roger Federer.
