Lindsey Caroline Vonn (nee Kildow ; born October 18, 1984) is an American World Cup alpine ski racer on the US Ski Team. She has won four World Cup overall championships--one of only two female skiers to do so, along with Annemarie Moser-Proll--with three consecutive titles in 2008, 2009, and 2010, plus another in 2012. Vonn won the gold medal in downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics, the first ever in the event for an American woman. She has also won a record 8 World Cup season titles in the downhill discipline (2008-2013, 2015, 2016), 5 titles in super-G (2009-2012, 2015), and 3 consecutive titles in the combined (2010-2012).

In her Olympic debut at the 2002 Winter Olympics at age 17, Vonn raced in both slalom and combined in Salt Lake City, with her best result coming with sixth in combined. On March 4, 2003, she earned a silver medal in downhill in the Junior World Championship at Puy Saint-Vincent, France.  Vonn credits a change in her attitude toward training to a bike ride with fellow ski racer Julia Mancuso and Mancuso's father Ciro when Vonn visited them at their home in Lake Tahoe, California. With little biking experience, she quickly found herself miles behind Julia and Ciro. Alone and embarrassed, she realized she needed drastic revision of her training regimen and her attitude toward training if she was going to be successful.  On March 24, 2004, Vonn was the downhill silver medalist at the U.S. Alpine Championships at Mt. Alyeska Resort, Girdwood, Alaska. Earlier that year 2004, Vonn climbed onto the World Cup podium for the first time with a third-place finish in downhill in January 2004 at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Her maiden victory in that specialty came at Lake Louise, Alberta, in December 2004. She captured five more World Cup podiums over the next two months.  In 2005, she competed in four races at her first World Championships held in Bormio, Italy, pulling in fourth-place finishes in both the downhill and the combined. She was ninth in super-G, but failed to finish the giant slalom. She cited the unexpected appearance of her father, with whom she has a strained relationship, for rattling her before the event.

Why did she fail?
She cited the unexpected appearance of her father, with whom she has a strained relationship, for rattling her before the event.