What Is Lindsey Vonn's Net Worth and Career Earnings?
Lindsey Vonn is an American former Olympic skier who has a net worth of $14 million. During her career, Lindsey Vonn won three Olympic medals, including one gold medal. She won 82 World Cup races—the most by a woman and only a few behind the all-time leader. Her victories include four overall World Cup titles (2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012), the first of which made her the only American woman to have achieved such distinction since 1983. Additionally, she holds 16 discipline World Cup titles in downhill, Super G, and combined events.
Vonn's prowess isn't confined to the World Cup stage; she's also a two-time World Champion (2009 Downhill and Super G). At the Olympic level, she made her mark by winning the gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games—the first ever in the event for an American woman—along with a bronze in the Super-G. Her indomitable spirit shone brightly as she battled injuries throughout her career, retiring in 2019 and leaving behind a remarkable legacy in alpine skiing.
Early Life
Lindsey Vonn was born Lindsey Caroline Kildow on October 18, 1984, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the daughter of Linda Anne and Alan Lee Kildow. She was on skis by the age of two, taught by her grandfather in Milton, Wisconsin, and then she moved into Erich Sailer's famous development skiing program at Burnsville, Minnesota's Buck Hill. When Vonn was 9, she met her hero, Olympic gold medalist skier Picabo Street. The meeting left such an impression on Street that she later served as Vonn's skiing mentor after watching the then-15-year-old Lindsey ski for the first time in 1999. The family moved to Vail, Colorado, in the late '90s for Vonn to train full-time. She attended high school online at the University of Missouri High School.
Early Career
Vonn's skiing career hit its first big break when she was 15 and became the first American female to take home the first-place trophy at Italy's Trofeo Topolino. She climbed the ranks of the U.S. Ski Team and made her World Cup debut at age 16. From there, it was only a matter of time before Olympic stardom was in her grasp. She made her Olympic debut in 2002 at age 17 when she raced in both the slalom and combined competitions in Salt Lake City. In March 2003, Vonn earned a silver medal in the Junior World Championship at Puy-Saint-Vincent, France. The following year, she climbed onto the World Cup podium for the first time when she finished third in downhill in January 2004 at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Over the next two months, she captured five more podiums.
Success
At Vonn's second Winter Olympics, held in Italy, in 2006, she clocked the second-best time in the first practice run yet crashed in the second training run and had to be evacuated by helicopter to Turin, where she was hospitalized overnight. Despite bruising and severe pain, Lindsey returned to the slope two days later. She competed and finished eighth and won the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award due to her brave performance through pain. At the 2007 World Cup, she finished third in the downhill and super-G competitions. In 2008, Vonn won the overall World Cup title, becoming only the second American woman to do so. She set a new American record for the most World Cup downhill victories with ten in Switzerland on March 8th of that year. She repeated her overall World Cup wins in 2009 and 2010. In 2010, she was named Sportswoman of the Year at the Laureus World Sports Awards. At the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, Vonn planned to compete in all five women's alpine events; however, a severely bruised shin from a training accident held her back. However, Lindsey went on to win the gold medal in the downhill, beating longtime rival Julie Mancuso by 0.56 seconds and becoming the first American woman to win gold in the downhill. In 2011, Vonn lost the overall World Cup to Maria Riesch by just three points.
Slowed by illness, Vonn's 2013 season got off to a rough start as she took a break from the World Cup circuit. After injuries plagued her performances in 2014, she decided not to compete in the World Cup that year either. She made a comeback at the end of that year at the women's World Cup downhill race at Lake Louise, Alberta, by winning the event. In March 2015, Lindsey won the World Cup downhill race at Meribel, France, and claimed the World Cup downhill title for the seventh time. In 2016, Vonn announced via Facebook that she had undergone surgery to repair a severely fractured humerus bone of her right arm due to a training crash. She returned to the World Cup in January 2017 and captured her 77th win. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Vonn tied for 6th in Women's Super-G and won the bronze medal in women's downhill. She announced her retirement at the start of her 2018-2019 Alpine Ski World Cup. On February 10, 2019, Lindsey won a bronze medal in women's downhill at the World Championships, making her the oldest woman to win a medal at age 34 at a world championship. With that, she fully retired from the race circuit.
(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)
All in all, her Olympic showings, combined with her victories at the skiing World Championships, have made Lindsey one of the most successful and highly-paid American skiers in the entire history of the sport. As would be expected, this success has made her quite a celebrity by alpine skiing standards, appearing on shows such as "The Today Show," "Access Hollywood," and "The Late Show with David Letterman," among other public appearances.
Personal Life
Lindsey speaks German fluently. She married 2002 Olympian and former U.S. Ski Team athlete Thomas Vonn on September 29, 2007. They divorced in 2013, and she opted to keep her married name. She famously dated Tiger Woods from 2013 to 2015. Lindsey became engaged to hockey player P. K. Subban in 2019. She proposed to him. They broke up in December 2020.
Lindsey next began dating entrepreneur Diego Osorio, the founder of Lobos 1707 tequila.
Real Estate
In 2014, Lindsey shelled out $3.85 million for a home in Vail. She listed this home for sale in 2019 for $6 million, lowering the price to $5 million in 2020. She ultimately accepted $4.8 million in July 2020.
In 2016, Lindsey paid $3.55 million for a home in West Hollywood, California. She sold the home in 2018 for $3.65 million.
In 2017, she paid $2.6 million for a home in Sherman Oaks, California. She listed this property in March 2020 for $3 million.
Vonn and Subban paid $6.76 million for a home in Beverly Hills in May 2020. He maintained this home after their breakup.
In May 2022, Lindsey paid $4.385 million for a home in Miami Beach, Florida. She listed this home for sale in March 2023 for $6 million.
