Lindsey Vonn Siblings: Meet Karin Kildow, Laura Kildow, Dylan Kildow, Reed Kildow

The former US Ski Team member and World Cup alpine ski racer Lindsey Caroline Vonn was born on October 18, 1984. With three straight victories in 2008, 2009, and 2010, as well as another in 2012, she won four World Cup overall championships, second only among female skiers to Annemarie Moser-Pröll. The first downhill gold medal for an American woman was won by Vonn at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

image credit; Zimbio

Kildow made her Olympic debut at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, competing in both slaloms and combined, finishing sixth in combined. She won a silver medal downhill at the Junior World Championships in Puy-Saint-Vincent, France, on March 4, 2003.

Kildow attributes a shift in her training mindset to a bike ride with fellow ski racer Julia Mancuso and Mancuso’s father Ciro during a visit to their home in Lake Tahoe, California. She quickly found herself miles behind Julia and Ciro despite her lack of biking experience. Alone and humiliated, she realized she needed to drastically change her training regimen and attitude toward training if she was to be successful.

Kildow won the downhill silver medal at the U.S. Alpine Championships on March 24, 2004, at Mt. Alyeska Resort in Girdwood, Alaska. Kildow had previously climbed onto the World Cup podium for the first time in January 2004 at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, with a third-place finish downhill. Her first victory in that discipline came in December 2004 at Lake Louise, Alberta. Over the next two months, she won five more World Cup podiums.