Lindsey Vonn’s first tattoo was the outline of a shark on her left ring finger.
“Because the shark is always moving forward,” she said.
Amid widespread skepticism of her prospects at the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, Vonn, then 33, had a tattoo of the Greek word for “believe” strategically placed on her right middle finger for those who don’t.
And when her grandfather, Don Kildow, a veteran of the Korean War, died in November 2017 only weeks before the Winter Olympics, Vonn had “Still I Rise,” inscribed over her right ribs.
“A reminder to myself to keep going,” she said.
The inscription comes from the Maya Angelou poem, “And Still I Rise,” words every bit as defiant as the woman who wears them.
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
It is a message that is even more fitting and true to Vonn nearly a decade later.
Vonn has found her wings again.
In the months leading up to the Olympic Games in Milan Cortina, Vonn, 41, the winningest downhill racer in history, has taken flight, soaring really to heights no skier has reached with her sights now trained on a spot high in the Italian Dolomites and her sport’s ultimate test.
Sixteen years after she became the first American woman to win an Olympic downhill, seven years after injuries drove her into retirement, nearly two years since undergoing partial knee replacement surgery, Vonn will step into the starting gate atop the Olympia delle Tofane course on February 8 the favorite to regain the downhill gold medal.
“I’m not looking to just participate in the Olympics,” Vonn said. “I’m looking to what I can do in the Olympics. That’s my goal. I’m looking forward and I know what I’m capable of. So I have my own expectations. I’m sure the world has their own as well. But I don’t think yours will be higher than mine.”
“If someone can do the seemingly impossible,” said former World Cup racer Felix Neureuther, now a commentator on German television, “it is the incredible Lindsey Vonn.”
Vonn went into the weekend atop the World Cup downhill standings by nearly 70 points over Germany’s Emma Aicher and has the highest podium rate–80 percent–of any skier on the World Cup circuit. Her victory at St. Moritz was her 43rd World Cup downhill triumph, more than any other skier, man or woman.
“What an incredible show of how far you can climb with hard work, determination, patience, and so much passion,” said Mikaela Shiffrin, the two-time Olympic champion and the all-time winningest, man or woman, overall World Cup skier.
In making her way back to the top of the sport, she has risen above the toll of a career that has included nine knee surgeries, one of which prevented her from defending her Olympic title at the 2014 Games in Sochi, and have left her unable to walk or even stand without being in pain before knee replacement.
She has risen above the conventional wisdom that women cannot continue to compete at a high level in their late 30s and into their 40s.
And she has risen above deeply personal and vicious criticism from some of the sport’s all-time greats, which has ranged from suggesting she is simply starved for attention to that she is mentally unstable. Michaela Dorfmeister, the two-time Olympic champion, went so far as to ask if Vonn had a death wish.
“To everyone that said I couldn’t do it, I’m too old, I’m a ‘has been,’ that I need to see a psychologist, I’m crazy, and I will never be as fast as I was,” Vonn said, “Thank you.”
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Her return, her rise, she said, was driven in large part because of her love of a sport she has been doing since she was 3. Her grandfather first taught her to ski on a 150-meter long hill near the family’s Wisconsin home.
“The reason I’m here is because I had a partial knee replacement last April,” Vonn said in October. “I really thought when I retired in 2019 that was it. I had an amazing life. I was really happy. But then after the replacement, I knew things were really different. My body felt so good. I just kept kind of pushing myself further and further to see what I was capable of and skiing and racing seemed so it wasn’t really a leap for me to say I want to come back and compete in these Olympics.
“This is different because I have nothing to prove. I closed my career and I definitely would like to close that chapter in maybe a better way than I did in 2019, but I feel like I’m light. I’m happy. I’m free. I’m doing it to prove I love it. I’m not doing it to prove anything to anyone. I also have a lot more perspective now, having been away from the sport for six years. I think that just allows me to compete in a different way. To be at the starting gate with a different perspective. I think that gives me an advantage actually.”
In talking about her comeback, Vonn is usually the first to bring up the “age question.”
“I bring up age because women don’t normally compete at my age and I think that needs to change,” said Vonn, who will also compete in the Super G in the Milan Cortina Games. She is currently third in the World Cup Super G standings.
“I think the perception of women competing older should change. Tom Brady’s done it. Lewis Hamilton. LeBron James. All of those athletes were and are competing in their 40s. It’s just not a common thing to see women. (Olympic swimmer) Dara Torres did it. A few people did it, but it’s not common. And I think I say it because not only am I 41, I’m 41 with a partial knee replacement. I know if everyone realizes how hard it is to do something that no one’s ever done before or, just I guess, to have the context. I think context is important in what I’m doing, and again I hope I change the viewpoint of having women compete at an older age. That’s what I want. I want it to be normal for women to compete longer and to feel like they can.
“I think I’m proving to the world that a woman at 41 can do anything they put their mind to.”
Cortina d’Ampezzo has pulled Vonn to return
Then there’s the emotional tug of Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The Olympia delle Tofane, the 2,560-meter long downhill course which drops a total of 750 meters and features the Tofan Schuss, German for Tofan poison, a section with up to 65 percent gradients where skiers hit speeds up to 81 miles per hour, is known as the Queen of the Dolomites.
It is a crown that would just as easily fit Vonn.
She made her first World Cup podium in Cortina d’Ampezzo, finishing third as a 19-year-old in the downhill. She won her 37th World Cup downhill on Olympia delle Tofane in 2016, setting a record for most career downhill World Cup victories. Her 12 victories in Cortina d’Ampezzo, plus another six podium finishes, make her the most successful skier on the royal run.
“I think the whole time I was contemplating this comeback, Cortina was always there,” Vonn said. “And for a long time I didn’t want to set that as a goal because I didn’t know if I would even be able to compete, let alone qualify or finish the season, finish a first season and get to a second season. I didn’t know where I would end up. And once I trained more and I got in better shape and I started skiing fast, I said to myself, this is an obtainable goal. ‘I can do this.’ And that’s when I announced I was coming back. I didn’t say that my goal was the Olympics because I felt I needed to compete first and get back into the swing of things and people would probably freak out. Which they did and say that I shouldn’t be doing that.
“But my goal has always been Cortina. Again, it’s such a special place for me. I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina. If it had been anywhere else, I probably would have said it’s not worth it. But for me, there’s something about Cortina that always pulls me back. It’s pulled me back one last time.”
Vonn makes it clear what or who the comeback is not about.
“I didn’t make this comeback for you, I did it for myself,” she said, referring to her critics. “Because it brings me joy and I feel I still have something left to give to the sport that has given me so much. But I have to thank all the haters for giving me extra motivation to keep pushing myself and fueling me when I was low.”
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
This isn’t the first time Vonn has found herself in the sights of intense criticism.
Her build-up to the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea was overshadowed by criticism and coverage of her comments about President Trump in an interview with CNN.
”]“I hope to represent the people of the United States, not the president,” Vonn said. “I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremony. You know, I want to represent our country well, and I don’t think there are a lot of people currently in our government who do that.”
The CNN interviewer asked Vonn if she would accept an invitation to the White House if she won a gold medal in South Korea.
“Absolutely not,” Vonn said.
Criticism from the MAGA-verse only escalated after Vonn’s sixth-place finish in the Super-G. It was the moment the red cap crowd been waiting for, and they seized upon it in hundreds of deeply personal, mean-spirited, sometimes creative responses on social media that all had the same general theme: This is what you get for messing with the Donald.
“The Jane Fonda of sports” is how one of the less vulgar tweets described Vonn, referring to the actress’ criticism of the U.S. government during the Vietnam War. Some expressed hope that Vonn broke her leg. Or both legs. There were other references to body parts.
About the only thing missing was Laura Ingraham telling Vonn to shut up and ski.
“No, that’s what bullies want you to do,’’ Vonn said at the time. “They want to defeat you. I’m not defeated. I stand by my values and I’m not going to back down.
“I may not be as vocal right now with my opinions, but that doesn’t mean they’ve won. I haven’t changed my mind.’’
Criticism of her comeback from peers will be a motivator
The more recent criticism about her comeback has stung more because it came from within the sport and from people she had previously admired and respected.
Pirmin Zurbriggen, a four-time World Cup overall champion, said, “I have the feeling that Vonn hasn’t recognized the meaning and purpose of her other life in recent years. She has probably suffered from no longer being a celebrated champion.”
Austria’s Franz Klammer, the 1976 Olympic downhill gold medalist and winner of 25 World Cup downhills, said, “She’s gone completely mad.”
Dorfmeister, who swept the 2006 Olympic downhill and Super G titles, said in an interview with Austrian TV that Vonn “should see a psychologist,” and then went even further asking, “Does she want to kill herself?”
Asked by reporters last spring what she thought has prompted such a personal level of criticism, Vonn responded, “I have no f—– idea.”
But Vonn does see a double standard in the criticism, pointing out that Marcel Hirscher, 36, a record eight-time World Cup overall champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, did not receive similar criticism last year when he decided to return to the World Cup circuit after spending the previous five seasons in retirement. Hirscher announced on Friday that his comeback was over after three races this season because of a torn ACL in his left knee.
“I don’t think it’s crazy,” she continued. “I mean, it is crazy, but it also, I don’t think I really deserved the disrespectful comments to the degree that they were given. I of course expected criticism in that, you know, is my knee safe? That’s a valid question. But there were a lot of questions that had to do with me as a person and my psychological state and what my life is outside of skiing and that was completely inappropriate and disrespectful, and I didn’t deserve it but no one asked Marcel if his life is fulfilled outside of ski racing. Or if he needed to see a psychologist.
“That was only directed at me and that’s pretty f—– up, to be frank.”
Vonn’s Olympic downhill victory at Whistler in 2010 came during a run where she won three consecutive World Cup overall titles (2008, 2009, 2010). She added a fourth World Cup overall crown in 2012. Vonn won eight straight World Cup downhill titles to go with five Super G World Cup crowns and three consecutive in the combined (2010-2012).
She won her 20th World Cup crystal globe, given to the overall and individual season winners, in 2016, breaking a record held by Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark for 32 years.
The injuries, however, also began piling up. Even winning the Olympic gold medal in 2010, then later in the Games picking up a bronze medal in the Super G, Vonn was skiing in “excruciating” pain from a fractured shin injury.
She tore her ACL in training in November 2013, an injury that kept her out of the Sochi Olympics three months later. Vonn fractured her humerus in her upper arm during a 2016 training crash in Colorado, splitting the bone into three pieces. Eighteen screws and a metal plate were required to repair the injury.
Still Vonn arrived at the 2018 Games in South Korea confident of both reclaiming the Olympic downhill title and breaking Stenmark’s career World Cup wins record of 86. Vonn had 81 at the time.
“I’m going to ski until I get to 86,” she said in South Korea. “I think next year I can get beyond 86.”
Instead, Vonn would finish third in the Olympic downhill. She spread her grandfather’s ashes near the men’s Olympic downhill course. She was still shy of Stenmark’s record when she retired following the 2019 season. Shiffrin would go on to break the record, accumulating 106 World Cup wins and counting.
“I think it was hard at first to watch ski racing after I retired, especially watching the Beijing Olympics,” Vonn said. “It was a course that all my friends texted me and said you would have crushed that course. So it was a little bit hard. When I retired, I was very proud of what I accomplished, but I could have mentally gone much longer. I just couldn’t physically continue. So that part of it, watching the sport from the outside looking in was a little bit challenging. But it was also fun.
”]”I saw the new generation coming in, these new girls I’m racing with, these young women coming up through the ranks and building their confidence and building the results. and now to be part of that team is really special.”And also it gives me a much different perspective. I don’t know if there’s very many skiiers, if ever, that have been away for as many years and then come back. You just definitely have a much different perspective. I’m at peace with where I am in my life. I don’t need to be ski racing but I definitely love to ski race and I have nothing to prove. So I don’t feel like I have a lot of pressure, even if my dad says it’s the most pressure I’ve ever had in my whole life. He was attempting to downplay it for me, clearly.”
”]
But she was physically miserable 24/7, even after retiring. Getting up from the couch was painful. A walk up the street was an agonizing ordeal. There were also personal struggles.
She split up with her husband, Thomas Vonn, a former Team USA skier, in 2011 after four years of marriage. The couple’s divorce was finalized in January 2013. Then there was her high-profile relationship with golfer Tiger Woods, the pair splitting in May 2015. Vonn and NHL star P.K. Subban were engaged in August 2019. They split in December 2020.
Vonn’s mother, Linda, who suffered a stroke while delivering Lindsey in 1984, was diagnosed with ALS in 2021. She died in August 2022.
In 2024, Vonn reached out to Dr. Martin Roche, an orthopedic surgeon in Florida. Roche performed partial knee replacement surgery on her right knee in April 2024. The procedure kept the ACL, the medial meniscus and cartilage on the knee’s inner part intact.
Within weeks of the surgery, she was thinking of Cortina. For the first time since 2013, Vonn was able to train without restrictions.
“And I can literally do anything,” she said. “So I think I’m in potentially the best shape of my life, which is saying something at my age.”
She returned to competition at Copper Mountain, Colorado, in December of that year, finishing 24th out of 45 skiers. The following March, she climbed atop her first World Cup podium in seven years, finishing second in the Super-G in Sun Valley.
“It was really emotional,” Vonn said. “Like I said, I don’t think I’ve had anything to prove to myself. But there were a lot of critics last year and a lot of that came from my peers, from people within the sport that definitely kind of ate away at my self confidence. So when I was able to step back on the podium, I was looking for me and everyone else. And I think it was the second most emotional race of my career, second only to my Olympic gold. Just because I was 40 years old. Everyone told me I couldn’t. And I knew what I was capable of doing and I showed the world that I could.”
She won the downhill at St. Moritz on December 12, making her the oldest downhill World Cup winner and giving her an 83rd World Cup victory, her first since 2018.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
And so on a golden morning, Vonn will rise up into the rarified air of the Olympics, rise above her critics, above the doubts and the barriers of stereotypes and conventional wisdom, rise above the Games, the Queen of the Dolomites ready for one last royal run down the sport’s most storied course.
“In the course of my career, a lot of people have said (negative) things to me,” she said. “And I’ve always believed in myself. That’s my guiding force. I know what I’m capable of. So even though things people said about me in this comeback hurt, it didn’t stop me in believing in my ability. I knew that I could compete. I knew the way I felt on my skiis, and I never stopped believing. And I know it sounds corny. And it sounds like that’s what one should say, but that’s what I truly believe. I believe that I was meant to be in this position. I believe my hard work will pay off. And I believe Cortina is a perfect way to end my career.
“So sometimes in life there’s a little bit of fate, and I do think that’s in play at this point in time.
“I think every athlete has their mountain where they feel most at home. For me, it’s always been Cortina. I just have a good connection with the mountain. I know what it means. I know what it takes to win there. It’s really where I figured out how to truly race World Cup downhill. And I just love the town. Love the atmosphere. Everyone there has always welcomed me and treated me like a local. … It’s just a beautiful place, it’s hard not to stand on the top ot that mountain and not really realize why you love the sport. So I’m excited to be back there and see the sun rise on the top of the Tofan Schuss one more time.”
