“I dealt with a lot of depression, insomnia”: Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn talks about mental health struggles after transitioning to life from Pro Skiing career


“I dealt with a lot of depression, insomnia”: Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn talks about mental health struggles after transitioning to life from Pro Skiing career

Lindsey Vonn

Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn is an American former World Cup alpine ski racer who was on the US Ski Team. She won four World Cup overall championships and the first ever Olympic Gold for the country in the women’s downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics. She retired in 2019 at the age of 34 after a successful career. She recently came on to talk about her life- transitioning from a pro athlete to a rather normal retired life.

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Vonn has now been retired for 3 years, but is still most known for her fantastic career and skilful athleticism. In an interview with Today, Lindsey said that it was quite a tough transition from her pro life to not having that anymore. “It has been an interesting transition. It definitely took me a lot longer to find my footing than I expected. I always knew my career would come to an end, but when I actually woke up one day and no longer had skiing- it was tough.”

Also read: “Nobody deserves it more”- Michael Phelps and Lindsey Vonn head to US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame

Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn talks about mental health struggles

Lindsey Vonn
Lindsey Vonn

“I dealt with a lot of depression, a lot of insomnia a lot of things. I think it was very good for me to be able to write my memoir during that time because it was really therapeutic,” said Vonn. She said that the memoir helped her to reprocess everything that she had struggled with, overcome and gone through. “I am in a really great place now, but it took me a long time to get there” she emphasised.

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Vonn talked about skiing once again, but this time just for fun. “It took me about a year to get there, to get back on skis. I was a bit resentful that my career ended for a little while. But I rediscovered it, and now I’m skiing with my family and I went on my first ski vacation since I was a kid,” said Lindsey Vonn as she is beginning to enjoy her sport once again. She feels like everything has finally come full circle, and she has finally found the place and reason why she began skiing in the first place, which gives her joy.

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