American skiing’s golden girl was once part of sport’s ultimate power couple, and Lindsey Vonn looks back warmly on her relationship with golf superstar Tiger Woods.
“I mean, I loved him and I still love him,” Vonn told CNN’s Alpine Edge show.
When their relationship ended in May, Vonn blamed the split on the “incredibly hectic lives that force us to spend a majority of our time apart.”
“I had an amazing three years with him,” the 31-year-old skier told CNN. “Sometimes things just don’t work out and unfortunately it didn’t work out for us.
“But I don’t have any regrets and I think we’re both in a pretty good place.”
Vonn met Woods at a charity event in 2012, before they went public about their love for one another with a Facebook post in March 2013. Her divorce from former U.S. skier Thomas Vonn was finalized at the start of that year, having been initiated in 2011, four years after they wed.
Woods, who divorced ex-wife Elin Nordegren in 2010, spoke glowingly of Vonn and let his kids, Sam and Charlie, get to know the skier.
She attended tournaments to support him on the golf course, while Woods also showed up at Vonn’s World Cup races.
Despite having no regrets over dating Woods, Vonn is unsure whether she will be pursuing a new relationship anytime soon.
“I’m enjoying just kind of focusing on myself right now,” she said. “I’ve realized that I only have, realistically, three good years of racing left.
“So it’s kind of nice to just focus on that and focus on my career. But I don’t know, you never know what’s going to happen.”
After missing the 2014 Winter Olympics with a serious knee injury, Vonn returned in style last season, winning the 18th and 19th World Cup crystal globes of her career — for the downhill and and super-G events — and finished third in the overall standings.
In January, she broke the record for the most World Cup race victories held by Austrian great Annemarie Moser-Proll, and by the end of the 2014-15 campaign had extended her leading tally to 67 after totaling eight wins that season.
While success in this season’s World Cup is the immediate target, the lure of the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang remains the ultimate attraction.
The 2010 downhill Olympic gold medalist is one of the more senior competitors left in the field and the South Korea Games is likely to offer her final chance for sporting immortality.
Maria Riesch has retired, Julia Mancuso has had season-ending surgery and Vonn’s longtime rival Tina Maze has taken a year out, with the Slovenian yet to confirm when she will return.
“It’s kind of weird that my generation is kind of gone now and the new generation is coming up,” said Vonn, who will return to the slopes this weekend at the Aspen Winternational. “I feel like a veteran. I don’t know if I like that.”
While gold and glory still beckons for Vonn, she is already looking beyond the end of her career as her thoughts turn to motherhood.
“It’s very frustrating,” she added. “If I didn’t want to have kids I could probably ski until my late thirties, if my body held up.
“It’s just something that you have to think about as a woman. Life is a lot different. You can’t have a family at home and keep racing. It’s one or the other.”
