Lindsey Vonn
Janica Kostelic
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Janica Kostelic leads 3 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lindsey Vonn at #4 and Janica Kostelic at #9.
The case for Lindsey Vonn
The greatest speed racer in women's history and, until Shiffrin, the winningest woman on the circuit. Vonn's 82 World Cup victories include 43 downhills, a total nobody else in the sport is close to, and she won four overall Crystal Globes in five seasons between 2008 and 2012, a stretch in which she also took downhill and super-G world titles at Val d'Isere in 2009 and Olympic downhill gold at Vancouver in 2010. She collected 20 crystal globes in total across the overall, downhill, super-G and combined standings. Her career reads as a running argument with her own body: a shattered arm, two reconstructed knees, a broken ankle, a fractured humerus, and a retirement in 2019 forced by pain rather than form. She returned to World Cup racing in 2024 at 40 with a partially replaced knee, and podiumed again — the oldest woman ever to do so.
The case for Janica Kostelic
The greatest championship racer in alpine history, from a country with no ski culture, no federation money and almost no mountains suitable for World Cup racing. Kostelic trained across Europe out of a family car with her father as coach, and at Salt Lake City in 2002 won giant slalom, combined and slalom golds plus super-G silver — four medals at one Games, the most any alpine skier has taken, and a haul no woman has matched. She defended the combined title at Turin in 2006 for a fourth Olympic gold, level with Kjetil Andre Aamodt at the top of the sport's all-time list. She won three overall Crystal Globes and 30 World Cup races, and a hat-trick of golds at the 2003 world championships in St. Moritz. She retired at 25 after nine knee operations and a thyroid condition, having won everything available on a body that had effectively been rebuilt twice.