US alpine skiing icon Lindsey Vonn is one of the greatest athletes in history. Not only does she have a women’s record of 82 World Cup wins, but it is just four victories shy of the overall record held by Ingemar Stenmark (86).

Her retirement in 2019 marked the end of an era when her knees could no longer support her weight on the skis after years of abuse and injury. The Olympic champion may have had a turbulent relationship with her father, but he is the very reason she started skiing in the first place.

How Lindsey Vonn became a skiing icon

Lindsey Vonn‘s illustrious career started on a small ski hill with a vertical drop of just 310 feet called Buck Hill.

Vonn’s father, Alan Kildow, was a skier himself, training with the Austrian national ski team at age 18. Unfortunately, a knee injury ended his career early. But while he was active, Erich Sailer, a member of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame coached him.

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The two developed a strong bond, and Kildow moved to Minnesota. When Lindsey Vonn was born, he put her in her first pair of skis at the small age of 2, and by 6 she’d been introduced to Sailer. If you ask the storied coach, he’d tell you Buck Hill was the reason Vonn reached incredible heights in her skiing career.

“If I wouldn’t never have come (to Buck Hill), there would never be a Lindsey,’’ Sailer told Golf Digest. “Because I got Alan a job with a company so he could go to school. He went to school in the day and would be coaching at night. He met his wife. So it happened. Lindsey was born here … and it just was really exceptional, an unbelievable story.’’

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Vonn’s exceptional career

Erich Sailer, also known as “Yoda of Ski Racing’’, coached many U.S ski teams and World Cup racers like Julia Mancuso and Resi Stiegler. But Vonn is perhaps the most famous ski racer to come out of Buck Hill.

The skiing champion was the first American woman to win Olympic gold in downhill, which she bagged at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. In 2016, she won her 20th World Cup crystal globe title, the overall record for men or women. 

She had a tendency to crash while training, which is not unusual in the extreme sport. But she always bounced back from career-ending injuries to win more and more titles every time. Vonn wrote the book ‘Strong Is the New Beautiful’ in 2016 and a memoir in 2022 titled ‘Rise: My Story’.

She has been an inspiration for many young girls aspiring toward a career on the slopes.

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