Outside magazine** had a cover story on Lindsey Vonn a few months back that was quite interesting. She looked much prettier and more feminine in the photos she posed for that article (and in many other photos I've seen of her in the past) than she looked in those photos with Tiger.
Like Danica Patrick, I think she often looks best just in her sports attire, not all glammed-up.
The article stated that she was a whole lot better than just one of the top three female skiers, as someone above mentioned - it said she was the greatest female skier of all time and it was only a matter of time before she surpassed Ingemar Stenmark as the greatest skier of either gender in history (pre-knee injury statement).
The interview started off with her training in California at a gym she goes to that is used by world class professional athletes including a number of professional boxers and NFL Pro Bowlers. They have a seniority system there as to who gets to determine what music is played through the gym's speakers, with the top dog jock in the gym at the time getting that privilege. Apparently no matter whose music is playing, no matter that its a 300lb NFL lineman, when Vonn walks through the doors, he goes to the audio system and deferentially unplugs his iPod to allow Lindsey to plug hers in - she is recognized as the alpha athlete at that gym.
She has the height of a Victoria's Secret model (5'10"), almost has the looks of one,
but outweighs those models by a good 60 pounds (she's 170). Given that she probably has less body fat than a typical model, that's almost all muscle. She is an extraordinarily strong, fit athlete, the only female skier in history who is strong enough to be able to use men's racing skis, which if controlled properly, can be faster and edge harder than women's racing skis leading to greater control, which is a major reason behind Vonn's most recent wins.
Maybe one of the factors that she has in common with Tiger is the manner of the disolution of their marriages. Although Lindsey denies anything "bad" happened to cause the end of her marriage to her coach Thomas Vonn, as well as their professional relationship, his actions afterwards suggest otherwise. Thomas Vonn, a former Olympic skier himself, was not just Lindsey's coach but her equipment technician and he was compulsive about equipment tweaks to all of the myriad boot, binding and ski settings and options, keeping many notebooks recording all of those settings at various practices and races, always trying for the perfect adjustment to optimize Lindsey's performance. Apparently after their "it's over" talk, when Lindsey next checked her equipment, she discovered that he had changed and zeroed-out all of her settings and taken every last notebook and record of his equipment adjustments out the door with him when he left. I don't think someone does that when the reason for the divorce is "we've just grown apart."
** I'm not sure why I have a subscription to Outside - I think I got it as a free promotion. It is a mostly ridiculous magazine, usually featuring a couple of articles on some ultra-thrill-seeking wacko mountain climbers or round-the-world kayakers who succeeded in their sports, along with a couple of articles on idiot ultra-thrill-seeking wacko advernturists who died or had catastrophe happen to them in their favorite activities. As far as I can tell, the only real difference between the people the magazine considers heroes and the ones they consider idiots is that the latter were unlucky and died while the former lived doing their altogether stupidly dangerous activities.
