Babe of the Month - Lindsey Vonn, alpine skiing legend!

Lindsey Caroline Vonn, alpine skiing's poster girl, is as ruthless, brilliant and successful as they come in the competitive world of alpine racing.

Born Lindsey Caroline Kildow on 18th October 1984, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Lindsey Vonn is one of the world's top female skiers. Growing up in Minnesota, with her four siblings, Vonn began her ascent to sports stardom as a toddler, when her father, former competitive skier Alan Kildow, first put her on skis. He would later serve as her first coach. Vonn started racing at the age of 7 years.

Vonn then trained locally with coach Erich Sailer before moving to Vail, Colorado, in the late 1990's. In 1999, the 14-year-old Vonn made history when she won the slalom at Trofeo Topolino in Italy, becoming the first American woman to attain this honor. Over the next few years, she excelled as a junior competitor, and at 17 years old she was selected for the U.S. Ski team for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she came 6th in the combined. The following year, she won a silver medal at the Junior World Championships in Puy Saint-Vincent, France.

In 2005, Vonn joined the Red Bull Athletes Special Projects and began working with a new coaching team. Around this time, Vonn wrote on her website: "I had a feeling this was going to be my big chance." Vonn had high hopes for the 2006 Olympic Games in San Sicario, Italy; but during a practice run, she had a terrible accident she was evacuated by helicopter to Turin and was hospitalized overnight. She still competed, however, coming in seventh in the Super G and eighth in the downhill events.


Vonn made an impressive comeback the following year, winning two silver medals at the 2007 World Championships in Sweden, in the downhill and the Super G.
Vonn then began her winning streak at the World Cup in 2008, with a downhill championship victory — marking her domination of the sport.

In 2009, she took the gold in the downhill and Super G competitions at the World Championships and won both the downhill and Super G events at the World Cup.


In 2010, Vonn got the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream. She won two medals at the Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada; she earned the top honor - her first gold medal - in the downhill, and took home the bronze in the Super G. Over the next few years, Vonn continued to dominate the sport. She took top honors at the World Cup in the downhill, Super G and combined events over three consecutive seasons.

On 5th February 2013, Vonn suffered a debilitating injury at the World Championships in Austria. After tearing both her ACL and MCL, along with fracturing her lateral tibial plateau, she underwent reconstructive knee surgery soon after. It took several months of recovery for Vonn to recover before she would be able to hit the slopes once again. She was next seen skiing at a training camp in August.

All seemed well as Vonn stated that her injured right knee felt as good as her left on the slopes, but she aggravated her injury while training on November 19. She competed and placed 40th, 11th and fifth in the Super G at Lake Louise, Alberta, the following month. Unfortunately, only two weeks later, she had to remove herself from a World Cup downhill competition in Val d'lsere, France, after her MCL was sprained. The sprain, in addition to her torn ACL, made Vonn's likelihood in competing during the 2014 Winter Olympics unlikely. She announced on 7th January 2014, that she would not be able to compete in the Winter Olympics.

Vonn made her comeback on 6th December 2014 at the Women’s World Cup downhill race at Lake Louise, Alberta, winning the event in only her second race back. On 18th March 2015, Vonn won the last World Cup downhill race at Meribel, France and claimed the World Cup downhill title for the seventh time. The next day, Vonn notched her eighth victory of the season by winning the last super-G race. With this win, Vonn took the super-G season title for a fifth time, tying a record shared by German Katja Seizinger, Austrian Hermann Maier and Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal.

On 11th November 2016, Vonn announced that she had severely fractured the humerus bone of her right arm in a training crash. She had undergone surgery to repair the bone. Vonn returned to the World Cup on 15th January 2017, in the downhill race at Altenmarkt, Austria where she finished 13th. On 20th January in her second race back from injury, she won the downhill event in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, capturing her 77th win, an all-time women's record, passing Annemarie Moser-Pröll of Austria who had held the record since the 1970's.

Vonn made headlines in 2012, when it was reported that she was dating American golf superstar Tiger Woods, after meeting him at a charity event in 2012. The pair went public with their romance in March 2013, but they announced their breakup in May 2015 due to their busy schedules.
Vonn was previously married to former competitive skier Thomas Vonn from 2007 to 2011.

Lindsey's hobbies include cycling, tennis, reading, and watching NBC's Law & Order.

Though she makes many public appearances, Vonn says training takes up most of her life except for a few weeks after the ski season. Her hobbies include cycling, tennis, reading, and watching NBC's Law & Order.

Vonn appeared in the 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition which featured Olympians from the 2010 Winter Games, and in 2016 she took part in a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated, wearing only body paint.

You can follow Lindsey on: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and also on her Website 

Sporting Rich List and Why Women 'Pay' Second Fiddle in the Earnings Ladder

Being a top sportsperson is a sure fire way to get rich!

This week Forbes magazine published a list of the 100 highest paid athletes of 2012, which pretty much confirmed that theory. Let’s now analyse the results, focusing on which athletes and what sports are represented in this inventory of sportspeople with money to burn!

What struck me first was not the obscene amount of money that these professionals earn, rightly or wrongly, for basically doing a ‘job’ they love, but that of the top 100 highest paid athletes, only two of them were women.

Let’s not massage the facts and figures, but without a doubt there is still an irrefutable disparity in remuneration, both in wages and sponsorship, for successful women.

In a nutshell what I am saying is that in the last twelve months, of the top 100 highest paid athletes in the world, only two women had the earning power that has allowed them to dip their toes into the elite pool of sports highest grossing incomes.

Both these female athletes are tennis players.
Maria Sharapova (below right) was 26th overall ($27.9m) and China’s Li Na (right) was 81st ($18.4m). Sharapova, the current French Open champion has long had a coveted portfolio of sponsors that now includes Nike, Head, Samsung, Tag Heuer and Evian. Sales for the Maria Sharapova Collection, her line of products at Nike subsidiary Cole Haan, doubled last year.

Despite the increase in television coverage of women’s sports such as football, rugby and cricket, the gulf in earnings is huge. In the day-to-day workplace it is mainly men who occupy the boardrooms, salaries are disproportionate worldwide and sportswomen are likely to earn less than sportsmen for the foreseeable future, because the market rewards what it considers to be the ‘entertainers’ – men!

It’s the way of the world, but it really hits home when you view the Forbes list and see it for yourself, in black and white.

Turning to the list and identifying criteria among the top earners is actually not as blindingly obvious as one might have at first anticipated.

Athletes from 11 different sports qualified for the top 100. The world's highest-paid athlete is in jail. The guy in second place just lost a world title fight, and the man who held the distinction for a decade is now third.

Tiger Woods has lost his top position, which he had held since 2001, dropping to third place behind boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao (pictured right). Mayweather fought only two fights in the last year. He spent less than one hour in the ring to dispatch his two foes. His combined payday for the bouts: $85 million. Mayweather maximizes his earnings by acting as his own fight promoter through his company Mayweather Promotions. He collects all of the revenue from tickets, pay-per-view and sponsorships and covers the costs, including the purse for his opponent.
Mayweather is currently serving a three-month jail sentence in Las Vegas for domestic battery.

Pacquiao ranks second with earnings of $62 million. Over the past 12 months he fought Juan Manuel Marquez and Tim Bradley. The bouts netted him $56 million, despite Pacquiao losing his WBO welterweight title to Bradley just a few weeks ago. Pacquiao’s earnings also include money he gets from their broadcast in the Philippines. He also made an estimated $6 million over the past year outside the ring through endorsements. Pacquiao was only ranked 24th last year with $25 million, as he only had one fight during that period and Mayweather was even lower on the list.

Woods’ total earnings dropped $16 million from last year to $59.4 million and have been sliced in half since their peak in 2009. Woods last won a Major in 2008, but despite an increase of $2m in prize money won on the golf course in the last twelve months by Woods, it does not offset the loss of sponsors like Tag Heuer and Gillette. Woods career may be a bit rocky right now, but he was still the highest-paid golfer last year.

Despite a football-obsessed Europe, Americans earn far more than Europeans. European football clubs are developing a culture of selling off their clubs (and in some cases their history) to affluent businessmen from the former Eastern European block and Arab nations, perhaps indicating that those who make a living from kicking a circular leather ball were some of the world’s top earners. This is a fallacy.....because of the top 50 earners on the Forbes list, only four play football (soccer).

They are: David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney. David Beckham of the Los Angeles Galaxy was 8th overall and the highest ranked soccer player at $46 million. Then followed Portugal and Real Madrid superstar Ronaldo 9th ($42.5m), Argentina and Barcelona magician Messi 11th ($39m) and England and Manchester United talisman Wayne Rooney 37th ($24.3m).

You are far more likely to strike gold if you play American football, basketball, golf or tennis.

Miami Heat star LeBron James (right) ranks 4th overall at $53 million, the highest of thirteen basketball players on the list.

Thirty American football players rank among the highest-paid athletes, which is more than any other single sport. Peyton Manning tops them at 10th overall. The Denver Broncos' new quarterback made $42.4 million during his last season with the Indianapolis Colts, even though he sat out the entire season while recovering from a neck injury.

New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was top amongst baseball players and 18th overall with $33 million.

The figures for some sports can appear distorted and this is why? Using tennis as an example, Roger Federer 5th on the list overall ($52.7m), earned 50% more than Rafael Nadal 16th ($13.1m), and twice what Novak Djokovic 61st ($20.6m) made, despite having not won a Grand Slam tournament since early 2010.

Ultimately while the pecking order of success can change rapidly, earning power lags somewhat behind!

Here is a selection of other athletes not already mentioned, and how they have faired over the last twelve months:

#7 Phil Mickelson - Total earnings: $47.8 million

#20 Valentino Rossi - Total earnings: $30 million

#20 Michael Schumacher - Total earnings: $30 million

#24 Wladimir Klitschko - Total earnings: $28 million

#24 Lewis Hamilton - Total earnings: $28 million

#28 Tom Brady - Total earnings: $27.1 million

#48 Luke Donald - Total earnings: $22.2 million

#59 Kaká - Total earnings: $20.8 million

#63 Usain Bolt - Total earnings: $20.3 million

#65 Sergio Aguero - Total earnings: $20.1 million

#68 Fernando Torres - Total earnings: $19.6 million

#78 Sachin Tendulkar -  Total earnings: $18.6 million

#88 John Terry - Total earnings: $17.5 million

#91 Rory McIlroy - Total earnings: $17.4 million

The earnings totals (in US dollars) are derived from salaries, bonuses, prize money, appearance fees, licensing and endorsement income in the 12 months from 1st May 2011 to 1st May 2012. Taxes or agents' fees are not factored into the figures.

View The Full Forbes 100 Highest Paid Athletes Complete List 2012:

Data source: Forbes
My twitter: @BeerFootyBirds

Celtic thriller as Europe triumph in Ryder Cup classic!

A victory roar from McDowell (left) and Poulter after clinching the Ryder Cup

A stunning days golf at the Celtic Manor in South Wales saw Europe win the closest Ryder Cup contest since Brookline, Massachusetts in 1999.

Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell won the final singles match to help Europe regain the trophy by the smallest possible margin, 14½ points to 13½ points.

Trailing 9-6½ going into the weather delayed finale, the United States fought back superbly to take the match to the wire. Only Europe's Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and Miguel Angel Jimenez managed to win their singles matches, whist victories in the singles today by American's Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Jeff Overton, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Zach Johnson brought the USA level with Europe at 13½ points apiece.

This meant it all went down to the final singles match between McDowell and Californian Hunter Mahan, as Europe went in search of the magical 14½ points needed for outright victory. McDowell, ironically the US Open champion kept his cool and held his nerve as Mahan was forced to concede defeat on the 17th green, sparking wild celebrations among the European team and the majority of the 35,000 fans.

HOW THE FINAL DAY UNFOLDED (BST)

0905: Westwood/Stricker start singles (Europe 9½-6½ USA)
1149: Europe up in 7 matches, USA in 4, one all-square
1247: Stricker beats Westwood 2&1 (9½-7½)
1248: D Johnson beats Kaymer 6&4 (9½-8½)
1302: Poulter beats Kuchar 5&4 (10½-8½)
1320: McIlroy halved with Cink (11-9)
1329: Donald beats Furyk 1up (12-9)
1403: Jimenez beats Watson 4&3 (13-9)
1409: Overton beats Fisher 3&2 (13-10)
1414: Woods beats F Molinari 4&3 (13-11)
1442: Mickelson beats Hanson 4&2 (13-12)
1501: E Molinari halved with Fowler (13½-12½)
1502: Z Johnson beats Harrington 4&3 (13½-13½)
1520: McDowell beats Mahan 3&1 (14½-13½)

"A fantastic result for Europe's golfers, a great advert for the game and a marvellous advert for sport."

Chicago, Illinois is the venue in two years time, when the USA will have the opportunity to regain the coverted trophy on home soil.

The 2010 Ryder Cup in detail: http://www.rydercup.com/2010/