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⛷️Lindsey Vonn vs Jean-Claude Killy

Head to head · Ski Racing

Lindsey Vonn
#4

Lindsey Vonn

United States · 2000-2019, 2024-

VS
#12

Jean-Claude Killy

France · 1961-1968

Stat by stat

82 World Cup wins 18
4 Overall World Cup titles 2
2 World Championship golds 2
1 Olympic golds 3
3 Olympic medals 3

Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.

The verdict

Lindsey Vonn leads 2 of 5 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lindsey Vonn at #4 and Jean-Claude Killy at #12.

Head-to-head FAQ

Who leads more shared metrics?
Lindsey Vonn leads 2 of 5 shared teaching metrics on this page.
How do the published ranks compare?
Lindsey Vonn is ranked #4; Jean-Claude Killy is ranked #12 in this sport’s GOAT list.
Are these live stats?
No — bars and FAQ answers are editorial, scaled teaching marks. Open the GOAT lab to rescale your own selection.

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 Jean-Claude Killy

The shortest great career on this list and one of the most concentrated. Killy won the first two World Cup overall titles in 1967 and 1968, taking 12 of 16 races in the inaugural season — a proportion of a calendar no racer has since approached — and then swept downhill, giant slalom and slalom at the Grenoble Olympics in 1968, matching Toni Sailer as the only men to win all three at one Games. He finished with 18 World Cup victories in a circuit that barely existed yet, plus the world combined titles of 1966 and 1968. He retired at 24 and became the sport's first modern commercial star, later co-presiding over the 1992 Albertville Games and sitting on the IOC. His ranking here reflects an obvious limitation of era rather than of talent: there simply was no long circuit for him to dominate.

More head-to-heads

See the full ranking →