The Tragic Details Of Olympic Skier Lindsey Vonn Revealed

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They say that God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers. If that's the case, then Winter Olympian Lindsey Vonn is a Sergeant Major. If you take a look at the tragic real-life stories of Olympic gymnasts or the tragic details of Tiger Woods (an old flame of Vonn's), it'll become clear that sportspeople often go through their fair share of trials and tribulations on their way to gold, silver, or bronze. In fact, one study, published by Progress in Brain Research (via the University of Toronto), compared the lives of nonmedaling Olympians against those who took a place on the podium. They found that all the athletes who came home with a medal around their necks were exposed to some kind of trauma in childhood, from parental divorce to physical abuse.

So, with three Winter Olympic medals and eight world championship wins to her name, it stands to reason Vonn has had a few troubles — and that's putting it lightly. "People always try to think that athletes are these super humans that don't have weakness," said the Minnesota native when speaking to Yahoo! Life in 2022. "But we do, we are human and we do fall apart, and I think it's how we put ourselves back together that's the real hero in us. We don't stay down, we always get back up." Indeed, Vonn has had to get back up a lot. So, let's take a look at the tragic details behind the superstar skier.

Ever since she hit the slopes, Lindsey Vonn's frosty relationship with her father, Alan Kildow, grew colder and colder. After all, there's a fine line between love and hate. "He always supported me when I did well, which was 90 percent of the time, but when I didn't, he didn't handle it very well," Lindsey admitted before the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics (via CBS News). "It was so much criticism and so much negativity, and it was really hard to balance my emotions."

Although both have remained tight-lipped about their feud, by all accounts, Vonn's personal life choices put an ocean – literally and figuratively – between the pair. When Lindsey married Thomas Vonn in 2007, despite her dad's disapproval, the father-daughter duo became estranged. Those comments she made before the Turin Olympics, then, don't exist in a vacuum. Understandably, Kildow didn't receive an invite to their nuptials.

Despite the pair making up after Lindsey and Thomas called it quits in 2011, the frostiness – again, literally and figuratively – didn't end there. At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Kildow was less than impressed with his daughter winning bronze. "It's great skiing, but it reminds me of something that Buddy Werner used to say,” he told USA Today Sports. "He said there's two places in the race, first and last, and I only want one of them.” With a dad like that, who needs enemies?

Despite being in tip-top condition physically (when she wasn't injured), Lindsey Vonn struggled mentally throughout her adult life. "I've faced mental health issues since I was 18, dealing with depression and isolation. It's a funny thing to be surrounded by people and yet completely alone," she told Laureus in 2024. "I would win races and then go back to an empty hotel room and you're far away from your family and friends," she continued. "Success is not an easy road for many reasons, and mental health is definitely one of them." She's not alone in feeling such a way, not least among sports stars. Just take a look at what Naomi Osaka has said about mental health. Vonn's struggles also weren't helped by her many, many injuries. They say depression can't hit a moving target, but it can be pretty accurate when you're left bedridden.

In her memoir, "Rise: My Story," she got candid about just how depression affected her. "In a way, it's like you stop being yourself, and turn into a person you don't recognize," she wrote (via Women's Health). "You feel hopeless, kind of like you're falling deeper and deeper into a black pit and you're powerless to stop it." It's an important reminder: even if you're an Olympian, no one is above mental health struggles.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Lindsey Vonn's parents broke up when she was 18, and it took its toll on her mental well-being. "I was in a bad spot," she wrote in her aforementioned memoir, according to People, about the aftermath of her mom and dad's divorce. "It started when my gym sessions kept getting later and later, and eventually I was at the gym at 7:00 at night, then not at all. That's when I knew I had a problem." That's also when Vonn, reluctantly, got help and was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft.

Although Vonn was an adult when her parents divorced, that doesn't mean the way it affected her should be taken any less seriously. "Many times I've heard adult children say, 'it felt like the rock that was my family ... my support network system that I grew up with ... was sucked into an earthquake fault'", the co-author of "Home Will Never Be the Same Again: A Guide for Adult Children of Gray Divorce," Carol Hughes, told the BBC. "All of a sudden, their parents are divorcing, and they feel like the bottom has fallen out of their lives."

Skiing served as an escape — or a crutch, as she later admitted in 2022 – for Vonn during this tumultuous period in her family life. "When my parents were getting divorced, I just said to myself, 'Go to sleep and tomorrow you can go skiing,'" Vonn recalled (via This is Money). "I cried myself to sleep, and in the morning I was up on the mountain and I was good. When I ski, I'm happy." We're glad she could find solace on the slopes, at least.

Between ACL tears and catastrophic crashes, injuries hampered Lindsey Vonn's career. From 2006 to 2019, she had more tweaks, breaks, and fractures than most people have had hot dinners. Unsurprisingly, then, her regular trips to the doctor's office wore her down. "A lot of my depression in my career was instigated because of injury and being in bed for an extended period of time," she told Sky Sports in 2022. "I think all of those things definitely contributed to deeper levels of depression to some degree, especially after my second anterior cruciate ligament surgery."

In 2020, when asked to list all the injuries she had on "In Depth with Graham Bensinger," Vonn couldn't even remember some of their names. Nor could she remember how many concussions she'd had – that's how injury-inflicted she was on the slopes. Ironically, the New York Times best-selling author actually had to keep working out to stop the pain. "I [had] to work out, if I don't work out my knee is in extreme pain," she continued when speaking to Bensinger in 2020. "This is life now, so how do I manage this to live with as little pain as possible, and I'm trying to make it through." You've gotta feel for Vonn — that's no way to live.

Thankfully, in 2023, she underwent knee replacement surgery, which made her knee-based agony go from a hundred to zero. "It was the first time in a very, very long time that I didn't have pain," Vonn revealed to Outside. Heck, she even got back on the slopes and began planning to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics!

Lindsey Vonn's marriage to her husband, Thomas Vonn, mixed business and pleasure like Suzanne Somers and her husband, Alan Hamel. Thomas was not only a life partner but also her coach and adviser on the slopes. But after four years of marriage, between 2007 and 2011, the partnership that brought home an Olympic gold and multiple world titles came to an end when both parties filed for divorce.

But there was no let-up for Lindsey. A week after the divorce went public, she strapped her skis on in Alberta for the Alpine Ski World Cup. "It was really hard," she said regarding racing with heartbreak when speaking to The Denver Post. However, yet again, it was skiing that helped her stave off the sorrow. "Some days were better than others. Once I got into the weekend and the races, it got a little bit easier, but the training runs were definitely really hard," she continued.

As we've noted, her divorce also helped her reconnect with her father, with whom she'd been estranged since the mid-00s. "My dad is helping me through this," Lindsey told The New York Times in 2011. "It's really great to talk to him again. We're trying to start over." Silver linings, we guess.

"I definitely had a moment there after I won the gold medal in 2010, where I was very self-conscious," Lindsey Vonn told ABC News in 2016. "It was my first time being on red carpets and stuff like that. I was not confident in myself and the way that I looked." The last thing someone feeling like that needs is online trolls commenting on their appearance. However, Vonn has revealed the extent of her body shaming. In fact, in one Instagram carousel, she even shared a hate-filled screenshot of some horrible comments trolls had made about her appearance. But it wasn't just keyboard warriors who had negativity to spread. Throughout her career, as she told the New York Post's fashion and lifestyle offshoot Alexa in 2021, even people IRL told her what she should and shouldn't be wearing.

"I've posted quite a few swimsuit pics lately, which is scarier than it seems," she wrote in the caption of the aforementioned Instagram post in 2020. "Even as an athlete there are ruthless comments and media stories that tear apart my body and I admit it sometimes hurts me." Before adding that, in spite of her detractors, she was content with her appearance and the sporting success her body gave her. Keep preaching body positivity, Lindsey!

During 2019's World Championships in Sweden, Lindsey Vonn announced she would be hanging up her skis, Lycra, and massive sunglasses. Prior to the tournament at Scandinavia's biggest ski resort, where she finished third, Vonn had planned to end her career later that year. However, the pain in her knees was too much and forced her to make the decision in February.

Understandably, calling it a day wasn't easy, and not just because Vonn's net worth means she makes more than you think. "It's been an emotional 2 weeks making the hardest decision of my life," she wrote in an emotional Instagram caption. "But I have accepted that I cannot continue ski racing." The idea of determination in the face of adversity is what defined the decorated skier's career, and it's what made her retirement all the more saddening; it wasn't for want of trying. As Vonn attested in her Instagram post, "My body is broken beyond repair and it isn't letting me have the final season I dreamed of. My body is screaming at me to STOP and it's time for me to listen."

In the end, her career is a tragic tale of what could have been — for Vonn, at least. "Honestly, retiring isn't what upsets me," she continued. "Retiring without reaching my goal is what will stay with me forever."

"You worked your whole life for [the Olympics] and then it's over," Lindsey Vonn told People in 2021, a few years into her retirement. "And you're like, 'What do I do now?'" With all that time wondering what to do, her mental health nosedived.

"It was hard," she told CNN in the same year. "I love working hard – physically, mentally – and most of those things all went away when I retired." Vonn is not alone in finding retirement from professional sport difficult. As we've covered, many athletes have mental health struggles while plying their trade. But, sadly, the same rule applies once they've retired. In fact, a study from BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine found that the prevalence of anxiety and depression among ex-athletes tended to be double that of the general population. 

"[Retiring] was definitely a transition to be able to figure out 'OK, what am I doing now? Who am I?' and so it just took me a bit," she continued when speaking to CNN. "I'd say probably a year, to really feel like I had my feet on the ground and I was in a happy, stable place." How did she make that transition? She found successful coping mechanisms, like reaching for her pen and paper when feeling low to do some journaling. Also, her dogs helped by getting her out of bed each morning, even when she wasn't booked and busy. Here's to healthy coping mechanisms. 

"My sweet mother Lindy has lost her battle with ALS," Lindsey Vonn captioned a heartbreaking Instagram carousel in August 2022. "She passed away peacefully as I held her hand." To add to the tragedy, it was only a year since Vonn's mother was diagnosed with the disease (which is also known as Lou Gehrig's) when she passed.

Unlike her fractured and sometimes estranged relationship with her father, Lindsey's mother had been the still point in her turning snow-filled life and career. Heck, to give you an idea of just how dedicated she was to her daughter, Lindy Lund would drive a 36-hour round trip to get an adolescent Vonn to and from ski practice. Not only was Lindy there for Vonn all those years, but she also served as a constant inspiration to the Team USA ace. "She's taught me so much about strength and character," said Vonn before her mom's passing, during her induction to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame (via Today). "It's because of the example that my mother set that I was able to overcome whatever obstacle was thrown at me. Thank you, Mom." So, understandably, the loss hit Vonn hard. 

"Grieving is not simple," the Olympian wrote in another Instagram post, a few days after she'd announced her mother's passing. "Sadness comes in waves like the ocean but it can also come in like a tsunami and drown me." Sadly, Vonn's grieving didn't end there.

Lucy, Lindsey Vonn's Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, helped "The Pack" host through a lot. Whether it was her struggles on the road or in retirement, at the Olympics or in hot air balloons, Lucy was by Vonn's side. However, in March 2025, the roles reversed when Lucy's kidneys began to fail, and Vonn headed home to Utah to be with her. Tragically, less than a week after she returned home, the skier – who announced she'd return to the slopes in 2024 – let her social media followers know Lucy had passed.

"9 years ago she came into my life, and from the very first moment until the very last, she brought so much light and love to me and everyone she met," Vonn wrote in the caption of a heartfelt Instagram carousel featuring pictures of her with her pup. "There will never be enough words to describe how much I love her and my heart will never ever be the same without her," she continued. "There will never be another Lucy."

An outpouring of love for Vonn filled the comments under the post. "I'm SO sorry. Sending you so much love," wrote "The Vampire Diaries" actress Nina Dobrev. We second that — stay strong, Lindsey.