It’s one thing to inscribe your own grand story in the great book of American achievement, as Lindsey Vonn—a two-time gold medalist at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, four-time overall FIS Alpine Ski World Cup champion, the first American woman to win Olympic gold in downhill skiing, and generally considered one of the greatest alpine ski racers of all time—has done again and again. It’s another to inspire someone else’s.
Indeed, one of the biggest stories in the American sports world this year was Serena Williams’s return to tennis, four years after her retirement. Turns out, we have Vonn to thank, in part. The pair have known each other for years, drawn together by their shared experience of being, well, GOATs—elite athletes competing at the highest level of their sport, and usually winning. “We’re all in the same circle, Serena and LeBron [James] and Steph [Curry] and [Tom] Brady,” Vonn tells me one July afternoon. They all understand each other in a way few others can.
That’s why, even before Williams announced her comeback, Vonn had a hunch that her friend was going to return to the court. “I just had a feeling, and then her coach was like, ‘Yeah, dude, she’s doing it because of you,’” Vonn says, with a small grin. “Serena told me the same thing. ‘You did it, so I can do it, too.’”
In 2019, five years after her own retirement, Vonn made an August return to the slopes, replete with a titanium knee replacement. The GOATs understood why. “Everyone knew why I did it, and there wasn’t really a question of ‘Should I do it?’” she says. She was 39, which meant she drew plenty of criticism about her comeback, much of it centered on the idea that she was too old to compete at the same level. “The only person who had anything different to say was Roger [Federer], because he is so Swiss and concerned about my well-being—like, I’m already pushing the limit because I’ll go too fast,” she laughs. “Everyone else was like, Man, you’re tough as hell. I was like, Sure, I’ll take it.”
It didn’t take long, though, for her to start racking up accolades again: Within a year of returning, she clinched her 83rd World Cup win and qualified for the 2026 Winter Olympics this past February, her fifth appearance in the Games. She’d ruptured her ACL mere days before her event, but pledged to ski anyway. You might remember how it ended for her: 13 seconds into her downhill run, Vonn’s right arm got clipped by a gate, which swung her body off course.
Spectators could hear her cries of pain before she was airlifted off the slope with a complex fracture in her leg and rushed into emergency surgery. In the days following, media coverage and her comment section were filled with equal parts well-wishes and I-told-you-sos about her age and ability.
Vonn wants everyone to remember one important detail: Before all that, she was dominating. Age was irrelevant to her, but other people wouldn’t stop bringing it up. In her early 40s, Vonn—who has competed in the sport since she was 7—was, by many measures, performing better than she had for the majority of her career. Before her Olympic crash, she was actually winning her category.
“It’s not like, because I’m older, I can’t ski anymore,” she says, sounding rightfully fed up. “If my body can do it, then it’s my talent. It’s like riding a bike. It’s not like I suddenly forgot how to ski. If I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t be doing it. I just found it really hilarious that people could criticize me for literally everything, and I really enjoyed proving them wrong.”
More than the criticism, Vonn got mad props, especially from male athletes. She was happy for the recognition, of course, but she tells me she wished the conversations were about her winning, not her persevering. Her love for competition could fill oceans. Most people have a thirst to prove themselves; Vonn’s is nearly insatiable, a fervor. It’s a baseline characteristic, set deep in her stone.
“If someone beats me, it’s because I made a mistake. I don’t blame someone else for being better than me; I blame myself.” —Lindsey Vonn
Vonn tells me about a speech she’d made earlier in the day at a retail business conference in Orlando. While she was on stage, the host asked her if they could play a little game. Vonn immediately responded, “Can I win?” Her competitiveness is reflexive. “If someone beats me, it’s because I made a mistake,” she says. “I don’t blame someone else for being better than me; I blame myself. I know what I’m capable of, and if I don’t live up to my own expectations, then that’s only on me.”
Her competitive spirit extends beyond gender: In 2012, after winning the downhill World Cup title the season before, Vonn applied to the FIS to compete against men. Their response was impossible: She’d have to quit the women’s tour entirely, re-register as a man, then build her point profile back. Simply put, “They didn’t want me to do it,” she says. She regrets not being able to see what she could’ve accomplished. “It would’ve been great for the sport, and it was a missed opportunity.”
By July, she tells me that she’s past the gnarliest parts of recovery, which started with five surgeries. Life is beginning to look normal again. She has just gone to the FIFA World Cup final with her sister (she loved Shakira’s halftime performance, but had some notes for Justin Bieber), taken a vacation, and wrapped up a few work trips. “It was a very traumatic few months,” she says. She likens it to the isolation of the early Covid pandemic. “I just feel really free, and I’ve got so much energy. You just want to go into the street and explore.”
She’s also getting better at handling the criticism that comes from being in the public eye. Seeing people criticize athletes like Williams or LeBron James for playing while “too old,” despite their proficiency, has helped her realize that haters just wanna hate. Social media has also been an important tool in chronicling her recovery, a journal of sorts. Two weeks after the injuries, Vonn posted a video detailing exactly what her body had endured, complete with videos of bone scans. “Just holding it in hurts me more than saying what’s on my mind,” she says. “I’ve always been an open person, and I’m not perfect, and I don’t pretend to be.”
But more than that, Vonn cites her goldfish-like memory as her means of getting through dark times. It’s a characteristic she learned from her mother, Linda Krohn, who had a stroke while giving birth to her. Vonn has always felt that her own hardships paled beside her mother’s. No matter what she faced, she could overcome it. Krohn, who died of ALS in 2022, could not. “You can’t hang onto the bad things that happen to you,” Vonn says. She remarks on how many people were surprised that she was so positive after her crash. “What am I gonna do, sulk in my misery? No, I got to move forward. You just have to keep living life, and that’s always been the way I’ve thought about it. I give everything I have to everything I do. I don’t have any regrets because of it.”
Lindsey Vonn covers the Art Arena x CULTURED special issue, available for purchase here.
Photography by Sheree Hovsepian
Styling by Andrew Gelwicks
Hair by Mitchell Ramazon
Makeup by John Wilger
Production by Dionne Cochrane
Production Assistance by Brittany Thompson
Light by Colin Barry Jester
Location: PIER59 Studios
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