She arrived barefaced, hair damp from her post-gym shower, and went straight into hair and makeup—three stylists working at once while she offered calm, exact feedback. She’s done this countless times, toggling between athlete and model, snow and studio. That’s the duality of Lindsey Vonn, the consummate professional, who floats between the two worlds with fluency.
At her request, the genre-bending vocals of Jessie Murph’s country trap album pulse through the speakers. The ski racer is in her country music era, she says. (“Nothing sad, nothing about heartbreak.”) The set hums with energy—fans roaring, camera shutters firing, stylists darting in to adjust a trench coat or brush bronzer on her cheeks—yet Vonn remains composed, fully in control.
We’re shooting the Outside magazine winter cover (yes, this one), and we’re in Brooklyn, because in the month before the start of the World Cup ski season, if you want Lindsey, you go to Lindsey.
The choreography of her schedule is well-rehearsed: dawn workouts, media, evening fundraisers. Grind and spectacle, both essential.
By late afternoon, she’s visibly tired. Her movements slow; she goes inward, conserving energy. There’s another event waiting, another stage to step onto. When the camera lowers, she studies the monitor—muscle tone, posture, jawline, light. It isn’t vanity so much as it is maintaining agency. She’s spent decades shaping how the world sees her: strong, feminine, fierce. With the next Olympics on the horizon, she wants to be certain that the image still tells the truth. Control is her protection. It’s the same discipline she brings to everything she does.
When the lens lifts again, she’s locked in—eyes fixed, posture sharp. The athlete reappears, and she delivers.
Vonn’s ability to prioritize and compartmentalize like this—to give no less than 100 percent in any given moment—is her signature operating system. It’s what powered 82 World Cup wins, four overall titles, 16 discipline titles, and three Olympic medals before she retired in 2019. Her list of accolades outnumber her injuries, but not by much. Over 19 years, she endured ligament tears, fractures, concussions, and 12 major surgeries, even racing the season before her temporary retirement without a lateral collateral ligament and with three fractures in her left leg.
“What I did wasn’t easy,” she says. “There aren’t words to quantify how hard it was for as long as I did it.”
That same drive fueled her comeback last season, six years post-retirement and after a partial knee replacement. “I’d expected never to race again,” she says. “But I can physically do it. And I love ski racing—life’s too short not to take opportunities like this.”
Without having trained for very long before the start of the season, Vonn still placed second in a super giant slalom (super-G) in March, becoming the oldest woman, at 40, to podium in a World Cup race. Now she’s setting her sights on the 2026 Winter Games in Cortina, Italy—the site of both her first World Cup podium and her record-breaking 63rd win.
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