VAIL — With a pinch-me sense of delight, Lindsey Vonn is raving about the swank new condominium she and her husband now call home at Vail Square. It’s right around the corner from the gondola, with a European ambience and luxury accommodations, including the use of a butler.
“The coolest part for me is that they have housecleaning that comes every day, so I don’t have to clean anymore, which I’m so happy about,” Vonn says. “I hate it. I hate cleaning. I hate cleaning.”
Vonn’s husband, Thomas, can’t resist. “Say it again,” he teases. “I don’t think he got it.”
Life is good for the Vonns, who used the interim between ski camps in New Zealand last month and Chile this month to begin moving their belongings over from Park City, Utah. A two-time World Cup overall champion and Ski Club Vail alumna, Vonn recently signed an expanded four-year sponsorship deal with Vail Resorts that brings her back to a valley her heart never left.
“I wanted to come back to the Vail Valley,” said Vonn, who moved from her native Minnesota to Vail when she was 12. “Vail is our home. We’re here permanently.”
Vail has long been one of Vonn’s primary sponsors, but now that she has become the face of the women’s World Cup and the U.S. Olympic team leading up to the Vancouver Games, resort officials saw the benefit of taking the relationship to another level.
“She has amazing integrity and focus, she cares about the sport, she lives and breathes it, she cares about future development, she loves to be around the young kids in ski club,” said John Garnsey, a Vail Resorts president who has helped promote ski racing in Vail since the 1970s. “She’s the best representative of a sport that anyone could ask for.”
Vonn will take advantage of a new snowmaking system at Ski & Snowboard Club Vail’s Golden Peak race arena that figures to provide superb November training conditions. They’re even willing to “inject” the slope with water so it will freeze into the ice-hard racing surface ski racers prefer, something few resorts will do.
“We can go over there and get training in, I can hang out with the Ski Club Vail kids, and I think it’s a great way to interact with the community, hopefully help the kids out,” Vonn said. “I’m really excited.”
Imagine how the kids feel. Vonn was mobbed at a welcome-home pep rally Aug. 21.
“It’s fantastic that she’s going to be spending more time here in Vail and even training on the hill here in the early season as she does her final prep for the World Cup season, for the kids to be able to see her and be around her,” said Aldo Radamus, the ski club’s executive director. “She’s such a fabulous role model. She’s just a class act in every way.”
Vonn, who said Friday that the thumb she sliced open on a champagne bottle last spring has healed, spent much of the summer working out six to eight hours a day in Austria, but she also went to the French Open and Wimbledon to cheer for her sports hero, Roger Federer. She met him in Paris the day he tied Pete Sampras’ record for Grand Slam wins, then got invited to a family get-together with him in London.
“His mom was like, ‘I know you, you’re Lindsey Vonn!’ ” Vonn said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, Roger’s family knows who I am.’ “
Not such a surprise, really — they are Swiss, after all, and Federer skis. Vonn wanted her picture taken with Federer’s family — and vice versa.
“They’re like, ‘We should go skiing,’ ” Vonn said. “His wife was super nice — ‘He always takes me down really hard trails,’ and ‘He’s such a good skier.’ It was so cute.”
Vonn remains resolutely focused in her pursuit of ski racing history. Vonn has made it clear she intends to use the attention she gets this season to promote the sport every chance she gets.
“I appreciate the help everyone has given me along the way. Now I’m here in Vail so I can give back to Ski Club Vail. . . . Ski racing is an amazing sport, and I want people to know that. I want to get that message out there and be what Picabo Street was for me.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
