Lindsey Vonn’s Comeback: History Made, Money Earned, and Legacy Extended for the Park City Resident

Earlier today, Vonn (41 and a long-time Utahn) became the oldest skier ever to win a World Cup downhill race!!!

13 December 2025 — Park City, Utah — At 41, Lindsey Vonn just did something no skier — man or woman — has ever done.

Earlier today in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the Park City resident and Olympic legend won the women’s World Cup downhill, becoming the oldest athlete in history to win a World Cup race while claiming the 83rd World Cup victory of her career — her first win since 2018.

For the roughly 90 seconds she spent rocketing down the Corviglia piste, Vonn earned about $60,000 in prize money (the standard payout for a World Cup race winner under the FIS 2025–26 prize structure).

Not a bad day’s work on a reconstructed knee.

From Teen Phenom to Global Skiing Royalty

Vonn’s story started a long way from Utah and from St. Moritz.

Born Lindsey Caroline Kildow in St. Paul, Minnesota, she grew up chasing gates at Buck Hill before her family uprooted to Vail, Colorado so she could train full-time.

By age 16, she was already on the U.S. Ski Team, making her World Cup debut in Park City, Utah, in 2000.

Over the next two decades she built one of the most decorated résumés in alpine history:

• 4 World Cup overall titles (2008, 2009, 2010, 2012).
• 83 World Cup wins, including 44 in downhill — Friday’s win came 21 years after her first downhill victory in Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, in 2004.
• 3 Olympic medals, including the 2010 Olympic downhill gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada — the first ever for an American woman in that event.

Add in eight World Championships medals and a record crystal globe haul and the statistical case is straightforward:

Lindsey Vonn isn’t just a former star — she’s one of the greatest ski racers of all time.

Her appeal, of course, has always extended beyond the results sheet.

Tall, camera-ready and supremely media-savvy, Vonn moved easily from the finish corral to Sports Illustrated photo shoots, documentaries and television cameos.

The Celebrity Chapter: Woods, Red Carpets and Relentless Spotlight

Vonn also became one of the rare winter-sports athletes whose personal life became global tabloid fodder.

After an earlier marriage to fellow ski racer Thomas Vonn, she entered a high-profile relationship with golf superstar Tiger Woods.

News reports show that the pair dated from 2013 until 2015, a nearly three-year run that kept her in front of cameras even when injuries kept her off the hill.

Along the way, Vonn stacked up major commercial partners — including Head, Oakley, Red Bull, Rolex, and Under Armour, among others — leveraging a combination of dominance, charisma and crossover celebrity that very few alpine athletes have ever matched.

Follow the Money: Vonn’s Lifetime Earnings

Prize money is the visible part of the iceberg in alpine skiing.

For Vonn, the numbers tell a very specific story.

• Public reporting pegs her career World Cup prize money at roughly $2 million total, accumulated over more than 20 seasons of racing and dozens of wins.
• During her peak competitive and commercial years, Forbes analyses indicate she earned about $2.5 million per year, with only around $100,000 per season coming from race winnings and the overwhelming majority coming from sponsorships and endorsements.

In other words, for every dollar Vonn on the slopes, she has made many more dollars from what those finishes enabled

• Global partnerships,
• Brand campaigns,
• Speaking engagements,
• Media projects, and
• Long-tail commercial visibility.

Current net worth estimates cluster around $14 million, reflecting both the arc of her race career and the durability of her off-hill business portfolio.

If you extrapolate those peak endorsement years — roughly 8 to 10 seasons, during which she was one of the top two or three most marketable winter-sports athletes in the world, followed by sustained commercial activity after her 2019 retirement — a conservative Utah Money Watch assessment is this:

Vonn’s race winnings total roughly $2 million.

Her lifetime endorsement, sponsorship, appearance and media income almost certainly lands in the low-to-mid eight figures, easily $15 million to $25 million over two decades.

That ratio — roughly $10 from brand power for every $1 from prize money — is the purest expression of the Follow-the-Money reality in modern individual sports:

Performance creates the platform, but the business is built in the margins around it.

The Injury Cliff and the Titanium Comeback

All of this was supposed to be behind her, however.

By 2019, a string of brutal crashes and chronic knee damage forced Vonn into retirement.

She was widely quoted in the press as saying her body was “broken.”

And from the outside looking in, it looked final.

Then came a partial knee replacement in 2024, using robotic assistance with new titanium and polyethylene components.

After the surgery, she began quietly training again.

By late 2024 she had rejoined the Stifel U.S. Ski Team in a comeback that most observers initially treated as symbolic.

It wasn’t.

Last season she rejoined a World Cup podium in Sun Valley, Idaho, becoming the oldest woman ever "to podium" in an Alpine World Cup race.

Friday’s downhill win in St. Moritz (almost a full second in front of the 2nd place finisher), pushes the story far beyond “feel-good comeback” into “unprecedented” territory.

At 41, Vonn just broke age records previously held by Didier Cuche (37) of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Federica Brignone (34) of Milan, Italy, for oldest World Cup race winners.

And she did it on metal and plastic where bone used to be.

Utah as Home Base (and Economic Platform)

For Utah, this isn’t just a distant European sports headline.

Vonn has lived in Park City for years, with local outlets routinely describing her as a Park City resident.

She’s embedded in the community, partnering with local schools through the Lindsey Vonn Foundation and supporting the return of Utah Royals FC to what she calls her “adopted home state.”

Her presence here does a few things economically:

• It keeps Utah in the global winter-sports conversation, especially as she targets a fifth Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, in 2026.
• It reinforces Park City’s status as a base camp for elite athletes and high-net-worth winter visitors.
• It anchors philanthropy, events and sponsorship activity locally rather than somewhere else.

Every additional World Cup win, every Olympic storyline, every brand campaign she fronts from a Park City home base is, indirectly, marketing oxygen for Utah’s ski, winter sports, and outdoor/recreation economy.

To put that into perspective, the Utah Department of Natural Resources reports that outdoor recreation contributed $9.5 billion in income to the state economy in 2023, the latest year data is available.

Snow activities in the state contributed $643 million in 2023, meaning that "... Utah rank(ed) third in the nation for winter sports ..." that year.

Why This Matters Financially: The Follow-the-Money Viewpoint

From a Utah Money Watch standpoint, here’s how to read Friday’s race in strictly financial terms:

• Immediate cash: About $60,000 in race winnings for one downhill (a healthy single-day paycheck, but modest next to her endorsement stack).
• Brand leverage: Proof that a 41-year-old, post-surgery Vonn can still win at the highest level meaningfully extends the life of her commercial value.
• Olympic optionality: If she makes the 2026 U.S. Olympic Team and medals again, her off-hill earning window could realistically stretch another 5-to-10 years in full stride.
• Utah halo effect: A Park City-based global icon chasing Olympic history is the kind of narrative destination marketers and sponsors pay real money to align with.

In short:

The win itself is lucrative, but the signal it sends about her staying power is even more valuable.

A Personal Note of Congratulations!!!

From where I sit, this isn’t just a cool sports story.

It’s a masterclass in how talent, resilience, storytelling and smart brand-building compound over time.

Lindsey Vonn has:

• Turned early-life sacrifice into one of the most decorated careers in ski history.
• Converted that career into a financial engine that now arguably earns more off the hill than on it.
• And, after her body said “enough” once already, to come back to win World Cup races from a home base here in Utah? That's spectacular!!!

So yes, from this Editor, Publisher, and CEO, this morning I say:

Congratulations, Lindsey. And BRAVO!!!

On the history.

On the money.

On the audacity to come back when every reasonable person would’ve stayed retired.

From a Follow-the-Money perspective, your St. Moritz win today is worth far more than the $60,000 at the bottom of the results sheet.

Publisher's Note 

This writeup was originally published and distributed to our subscribers at approximately 10:35am MT on Friday, 12 December 2025.

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