She's not the person I thought she was.
Not that I had a huge desire to read this book. I just reserved it at the library and when another book I was reading lost my attention I decided to skim "Rise," but I got hooked.
Lindsey's image... Beautiful untouchable champion. Smiling and fabulous everywhere. When she's not complaining. No one can deny her skiing skills, but despite all the media, no one has ever pierced the surface of Vonn until now. She had to do it. Because the media is too busy promoting fables and only you know what is going on inside your head.
She's a loner who has trouble making friends. She only feels comfortable on the hill. Skiing is everything. It adds structure to her life. And when things are not going well, she sinks, into depression.
Goals... That's the first thing I got out of this book, you can't get where you're going if you don't know where it is. We all need goals. Assuming you want to achieve excellence. Maybe the excellence you're pursuing is private. Or maybe you're more of a looker than a doer. But in truth, to achieve greatness you've got to have a goal.
Lindsey's was to be in the Olympics. She had that revelation when she was nine years old and encountered Picabo Street.
Now when one gets older, one often laughs at our younger year role models. We can now see three dimensions, oftentimes they're not that admirable. But when you're younger, these icons have incredible effect on you, especially if you're a loner who doesn't really fit in, who isn't cool.
Julia Mancuso is cool. Lindsey is always being compared to her, and always negatively. Lindsey herself tries to compete with Julia by stuffing kleenex in her bikini top, which comes out in the hot tub and exposes her and mortifies her. No matter what Lindsey does, she is not an insider, she is not cool. And all the coaches warm up to Julia. That's Lindsey's inspiration, surreptitiously hearing her coaches say they're going to put Julia in the 2002 Olympics and not her. And Lindsey turns it on, makes the team and has the best results and then...nothing. Back to regular life, back to being the underdog to Mancuso. Lindsey thought the Olympics would be transformational, but they're just another race. And then her career goes up and down and she's thinking of giving up.
That's what happens to many who achieve their goal. When they reach it and it is not satisfying, they can no longer do it anymore. Like rock stars. Oftentimes nonverbal outsiders who believe if they have hit records their lives will work. And then they do reach the pinnacle and then nothing changes and they can never do it again, they just can't find the motivation.
But Lindsey has her father.
Would it be better if we all had parents supportive of our dreams? And enough money to achieve them? Yes. But you can always change your life, you don't live with your parents forever, and not all achievements are when you're young. As a matter of fact, those who win when they're young oftentimes have trouble coping with the long life thereafter. Not only athletes, but TV stars.
Her father pushes her. Says it's not time yet. And arranges for Lindsey to spend the summer with a legendary Polish trainer in Monaco for the summer (her sponsor, Rossignol, helped out with the cost).
Lindsey had no idea what hard work was.
Most people don't. Lindsey thought she was training hard, but she wasn't even close. She now learned what she had to do and it paid off.
Most people have no context. Either they play in a minor league or not at all. But if you get a chance to go to the top... It separates the men from the boys. I remember my sophomore year in college, on the Middlebury Ski Team, doing the bleachers. We started off in September doing four sets. Hopping up on one foot, then the other and then both was one set. Never mind that it was hard, I didn't feel myself the rest of the day, even longer. And dreaded having to do five sets the following week. So I decided to quit. There was no way I'd be a starting racer anyway. But I was on the phone with my mother and told her and she bad-vibed me. So I stayed with it. Just before the snow fell we were doing SIXTEEN sets. Unfathomable back in September, but I did it.
Like running up the Middlebury Snow Bowl. As hard as that was the first time, the second time we ran to the top, then ran halfway down and back to the top again. Huh? I mean just when you're proud you made it, ready to relax, you're back in the grinder.
Lindsey's father said the family were not quitters. Even later in her career, when she'd had a bunch of injuries, her father pushed her to stay with it. To the point when Lindsey truly wanted to retire, her body having given out, no one on her team believed it, she was the one who constantly battled back from injuries. And she wanted to beat Stenmark's record, right?
Well, wanting it is not enough. Hard work doesn't mean you'll always achieve your dream. But you can come close.
And the dedication.
Lindsey didn't go to her junior prom. She didn't go to any school dances. She had to punt sleepovers. So much of what normal kids do she didn't do at all.
And she gets caught in an educational vortex and never finishes high school. Eventually gets her GED, but no one is looking out for her. There's all this money, all these coaches, but you're on your own so much. In Park City living alone as a teenager? Especially someone as isolated as Lindsey.
So she falls into a relationship with Thomas Vonn and ends up marrying him and excises whatever friends she does have and then a few years later, when she grows up, she realizes it's wrong and she's got to get divorced. Lindsey says breakups are harder than any training or racing.
And you think she's on the circuit, living it up as a bon viivant. But she didn't party, she immediately started thinking about the next race. And then there's the time she's finished in St. Moritz, gets a bunch of Red Bull and drives six hours to her place in Austria. Alone. Pretty glamorous, right?
Meanwhile, with success comes the hate. People saying her advantage is her looks, that she wouldn't get the publicity if she wasn't beautiful. Constantly complaining about perceived advantages in racing she doesn't have. You think by winning you'll be accepted, but just the opposite is true!
And then she retires. And every book has to end on a high note. She meets Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary and decides she wants to be a venture capitalist and...
These things are harder than they look. If you can do ONE thing at a world class level in life you're lucky. But Lindsey is all hunky-dory...I'd like to check in with her in a few years.
But therapy is helping her get through.
She's pissed she doesn't get the respect of men. But the men are too weak to seek help. She's stunned when she finds out she's depressed, she expected the doctor to say she was okay. And she's been taking the pills and been in talk therapy off and on forever.
And you think winning fixes all your problems.
So it turns out Lindsey Vonn is an imperfect person. You don't read "Rise" and want to go on a date with her, but you do start thinking about your own choices and dedication.
And the truth is almost all of the big wheels in individual sports and the arts are loners who have a hard time fitting in. They may want to, but they don't have the skills. So they fake it, or beg off from social situations. And in truth, nobody in the world really cares about you, you're fodder for the machine, there's always somebody there to replace you, so you've got to fix your own problems. But first you have to acknowledge they exist.
So do I recommend "Rise" to everybody?
Well, not really. If you're not a skier, you might not fully enjoy it.
But this is not a typical play by play sports autobiography. Not I did this and then that and aren't I great. If you know Lindsey's career, you also know how much is left out. Like her father not speaking to her after she marries Vonn. How Vonn sabotages her equipment in Aspen after she breaks up with him.
"Rise" is not a blow by blow, but a focus on the experience, the mind, what it takes, the challenges and the motivations.
And in truth, you can't learn how to act, what to do from a book. Because everybody is different, you're not the writer. But if you are an individual on their own path, seeing it, but feeling alone in the quest, I highly recommend "Rise."
The coterie of people who make it to the top is very very small. And the average person has no idea what it takes to get there. NO IDEA! Even Lindsey herself, she thought she was training hard until she spent that summer in Monaco. And the sacrifice. And if someone's boasting about how hard they're working, how great they are, don't believe them. Because the true world-beaters are internalized.
So you see Lindsey Vonn on TV, in the gossip online. And you may end up hating her, who does she think she is, beautiful, living the life of Riley. But after reading "Rise" you wouldn't want her life, no way. In a tunnel of skiing for decades, one-minded in your pursuit, only to come out the other side with no education and not enough social skills.
Every life is hard. That's the truth.
But if for whatever reason you dream big, have airy goals, you should read "Rise" to see what it takes. You truly have no idea.
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