Ambitious Vonn to ‘take on the world’ next
ARE, SWEDEN » Actor. Businesswoman. Mom. Heck, maybe even all three.
Life after skiing is already taking shape for Lindsey Vonn and she has not even competed in her last race.
“Next goal, take on the world,” Vonn said, perhaps jokingly — but who’d put it past her? — when discussing what the future holds for her when she retires after the world championships in Sweden.
One thing’s for sure: She’s unlikely to be slipping out of the limelight.
“I’m a driven person,” said Vonn, who has 1.6 million Instagram followers and, at the height of her career in 2013, was worth $3 million, according to Forbes. “I’m not going to be sitting on the couch, twiddling my thumbs. That would be boring. It’s all about pushing myself.”
Just like it was all or nothing in her record-setting skiing career— her current shiner around her right eye and the highlight reel of crashes are testament to that — Vonn intends to immerse herself in lots of things once she puts away her racing suit.
She said she’ll be setting up her own business, which involves a “new project” that she is keeping under wraps for the moment. Attending a four-day course at Harvard Business School last year was an early signal of her post-skiing intentions.
“I hope one day,” Vonn said, “they say, ‘OK, she was a skier a long time ago, and now she’s a successful businesswoman.”’
That would be a big deal for Vonn, who has previously referred to being “self-conscious about my level of education,” having never been to college. Her family moved from Minnesota to Vail, Colorado, when she was 12 to advance her skiing career, and she took online courses to complete her high school education.
Vonn would do well to take some advice from American teammate Ted Ligety, who is also 34 and who founded his ski accessories company , Shred, in 2006.
“It’s a whole other world,” Ligety told The Associated Press. “It’s never easy ... You can’t do it yourself.”
Vonn also is looking to get into the world of movies, both in front of the camera and behind it as an executive producer.
She has already been an extra on one of her favorite shows, “Law & Order,” and launched in December her own YouTube channel, LVTV, where she provides weekly lifestyle content on things like health, fitness and cooking.
It’s therefore no surprise that being a mother is not immediately on her agenda, but she definitely plans to have kids somewhere down the line. If her boyfriend, Nashville Predators defenseman P.K. Subban, wasn’t already aware of that, he is now.