By Karen D. Lorentz
Lindsey Vonn was the top female ski racer with 82 World Cup wins when she retired from racing in 2019. She was closing in on Ingemar Stenmark’s 86 wins when her injuries caught up with her. Now at age 40, she has rejoined the U.S. Ski Team after an almost six-year hiatus.
In January 2023 Mikaela Shiffrin eclipsed Vonn’s World Cup wins and now has 99 wins but is currently recovering from abdominal surgery to fix a wound suffered in the Giant Slalom at the Killington Cup. However, Vonn continues to hold the record among men and women World Cup wins in Downhill (43) and Super-G (28).
To some her return might seem crazy, especially given the multitude of serious injuries she suffered and which finally made her decide to give up the love and focus of her life — ski racing and going fast.
But if you read her book “Rise, My Story,” which was published in 2022, you’ll not only find yourself binge reading but beginning to understand both the title and why she has returned to racing. Sure, she had a partial knee replacement (titanium) which is making this possible, but as her story makes clear, she became a worldclass professional ski champion through a passion for going fast, hard work, and perseverance. She skied through pain and rose to the occasion of every race. That drive dates back to age 7 when she began to race and age 9 when she told her dad that she wanted to ski in the Olympics.
Her father, who had ski raced and was a part time ski coach and attorney, supported her ambition and set out for her what it would take to make the U.S. Ski Team. However, it wasn’t until he saw her hiking up the hill and running laps at tiny Buck Hill (286-foot vertical) when no one else was outside — the lift had closed due to a lightning storm — that he really became convinced she had the spirit and drive. The plan they set out matched her relentless and aggressive spirit that took her to the top.
But as she makes clear in her story, it wasn’t easy. There were challenges with anxiety, nerves, depression, and pressure to overcome and many sacrifices that extended to her entire family being uprooted from their beloved Minnesota home to live in Vail so she could receive the top training available there.
So you’re not a racer, neither am I. But once I began reading this book, it was hard to put it down. While I am a nice recreational old lady skier, I enjoyed learning about the makings of a champion and what the World Cup entails and how it works. This especially resonated with me since Killington hosts a World Cup.
There were many other things in her life that resonated, particularly her being taught by her father who carried her in a backpack for her first outings and then teaching her to ski at age 2 1/2 and then continuing to believe in her and support her dream. Her closeness with her family which extended to supportive grandparents made it clear that skiing was a tie that binds, and that was another experience, albeit recreational skiing, not racing, I had with my own father and siblings.
One of my favorite stories Vonn tells us of her relationship with Picabo Street, and Picabo giving her an autograph when she was just starting to race. Her description of a kind and helpful champion brought back memories of skiing with Picabo at Killington! (I had joined a press event and Donna Weinbrecht was giving a group of us a preparatory clinic for mogul skiing, i.e. making fast very short turns. We were at the top of a black diamond and it was my first time out so I hung back. When Picabo heard me say I wanted to go last, she asked if I was nervous. When I said yes, she said “I’ll ski with you!”)
Vonn relates how learning about friendships and competitive relationships among teammates was an important lesson, and she does a great job of filling us in on the real life of a serious athlete and the sacrifices that must be made to focus on one thing — going fast.
The descriptions of injuries — her first at age 12 was serious — and what it felt like to have surgeons drill into her back to remove stem cells to inject into her knee made clear just how much pain she suffered. She dealt with her injuries by rising to the occasion and racing even with hairline fractures and other conditions, like no cartilage to cushion the bones in her knee. When the knee no longer worked, she continued to race and then faced the hardest decision of her life — to race one last time. Her description of that race and her ensuing life transition is fascinating and will probably resonate with anyone who has faced a major loss that changed their life and identity.
What makes this book riveting is her descriptions of how she learned about mental strength, hard work, perseverance, and training. But what really led me to understand her return to racing this winter was a passage where she is new on the U.S. Ski Team and overhears the coaches discussing who to focus on leading up to the 2002 Olympics.
“I pressed my ear against the hotel room door and heard my coaches discussing the girls who were in the running to make the Olympic team. My chest tightened as I heard them say a string of horrible things about me, culminating in, ‘Lindsey’s not going to make it.’”
“It was brutal. That would have been bad enough, until they got to the second part of the conversation: ‘Let’s focus on Julia’” [Mancuso who had been on the team a year longer that Vonn], she related.
Vonn notes that she knew she had the talent and drive and was confident in her plan. “I would get better—better than I had been and better than Julia and good enough to win,” she remembers thinking.
Acknowledging that the coaches saw natural talent in Mancuso, she writes, “But they failed to account for the largest question of how much success is a product of work ethic and how much is a product of talent. The fact is, they underestimated me on all
levels, both when it came to my talent and skill, but also — and especially — how much I wanted it, and how hard I was willing to work in order to get there.”
She goes on to expound on her innate feistiness, writing, “Over the course of my career, I’ve found I do much better when people doubt me — the press, my coaches, my competitors, my teammates. When anyone questioned my ability, that became part of my drive.”
That night was the first of many times that she turned a lack of belief in her to “extra motivation,” and became “determined to prove them wrong.”
This book is a must read for parents who have kids who want to race and for any serious teen or adult racer. And for anyone who enjoys skiing and simply wants to know what racers go through — like what Mikaela Shiffrin is going through — and what Vonn’s return is really like.
Already, the 2010 Olympic downhill gold medalist has surprised skeptics by placing 14th at her first return to racing at St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the Super G after a disadvantageous 31st starting position. Vonn then took sixth- and fourth-place finishes in the Downhill and Super-G in her second World Cup return at St. Anton, Austria, Jan. 11-12. This past Sunday, Jan. 19, Vonn fell while on pace for a top-five finish in a Super-G in Italy.
“Rise” is available in hard and paperback and at the Apple bookstore as an E-book.
