Alpine ski legend Lindsey Vonn is competing at her fifth Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina.
Vonn missed the 2022 Games through injury but plans to compete this year despite rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament during training. The American has already won three Olympic medals, including a downhill gold in Vancouver in 2010.
But her sporting pursuits extend beyond the snow. Back in 2014, she played an exhibition tennis match against the legendary Roger Federer.
Motorsport is another of her passions. Vonn has tested cars from a variety of disciplines, including GT racing and Formula Renault 3.5.
Lindsey Vonn wasn’t ready to ‘fully commit’ to Formula 1
Speaking to Graham Bensinger back in 2020, Vonn revealed that she had even had a chance to join Red Bull’s F1 programme. It was a three-year commitment that could have ended in a full-time seat.
Vonn has been a Red Bull athlete for over 20 years, but she decided not to take the F1 plunge because it involved too many restrictions on her lifestyle.
It could have been a lucrative career decision. Vonn suspects that the salary of Ferrari superstar Lewis Hamilton dwarfs the combined earnings of the top skiing stars.
“I was thinking about switching to go into Formula 1, actually trying to be a driver,” she said. “I couldn’t because they wanted me to commit three years and they said, ‘You can’t get pregnant, you can’t do anything, you have to fully commit.’
“That was definitely going to be something that would be very exciting for me. Personally, I would love to do that. [It would have been] with Red Bull.
“They said if I didn’t make it to Formula 1, I could do NASCAR.
“The amount of money Formula 1 has is just… I think the salary of one racer is probably the total amount of money ski racing has for their annual budget as a sport. I bet Lewis makes way more money than all of ski racing combined.”
Which celebrities have driven Red Bull Formula 1 cars?
In 2011, Red Bull allowed Tom Cruise to drive their RB17 F1 car at the Willow Springs Raceway in California with guidance from former driver David Coulthard.
Cruise was promoting the return of the United States Grand Prix to the F1 calendar.
A couple of years later, skydiver and extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner got behind the wheel at Paul Ricard in France. Like Vonn, Baumgartner is tied to Red Bull.
When it comes to marketing, nobody in F1 can touch the energy drink manufacturer.
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