Skiing: Olympic queen just another face in Queenstown

Queenstown's ski season is in full swing with international racers training and competing at Coronet Peak.

Yet there's a fair chance the most famous skier on the planet could go unrecognised this weekend.

Step forward Lindsey Vonn, Olympic downhill champion, bronze medallist in the Super G; overall World Cup champion for the last three years; the first American to win three individual titles in one season; winner of more World Cup races than any other American; Law and Order actress and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.

It's a full life for the 25-year-old, who has become a regular visitor to New Zealand for training.

She and husband Thomas love it, partly because, as she puts it, "it's nice to just cruise around and have time to yourself. If I'm just in street clothes, I can blend in with the crowd".

She suspects she was destined for this sport from an early age. She was on skis at age 3 in Minnesota, where she was born, racing by 7, and when she met former Olympic champion Picabo Street around that time, "all I could think of was becoming an Olympian like her. I believe in fate and destiny. I've worked really hard to get where I am, but I also felt like I was meant to be a ski racer," she said.

Vonn played plenty of other sports, but the pull of the outdoors and the snow was always strongest. "It's kind of like you against the mountain, and I love that aspect of it."

Around 2004-05, she teamed up with the Red Bull Athletes Project in a career-defining moment. Under the guidance of Austrian coach Robert Trenkwalder, Vonn moved from being a promising racer into a different league. The programme, with new fitness advisers, made her stronger and faster.

"I was able to ski more aggressively and really push the limits because I have the strength I've built up over the years working with them."

Her first overall World Cup title came in the 2007-08 season, around the time she married husband Thomas, a former competitive racer, who put his career aside to back his wife. "Just being married gave me a lot more confidence in myself, knowing you have your lifetime partner with you. And definitely my skiing was improving. Everything kind of led up to the Olympics."

And when Vonn duly won the downhill gold - overcoming a harrowing lead-up with a painful shin injury which put her place in the starting gate in jeopardy - it was "the most special day of my life, besides my wedding", she laughed. "It meant everything to me, working my entire life to achieve that dream. It was an overwhelming and emotional day."

Capping that, she won her 33rd World Cup race, in the final event of the season, to overtake Bode Miller as the US' most successful racer.

Only five women have won more cup races and Vonn wants to keep competing until the world championships in her home town, Vail, Colorado.

At her present rate, that should be enough to knock Austrian great AnneMarie Moser-Proll's 62 wins off its perch.

But there's more to Vonn than racing. A few weeks back she became the first skier, male or female, to win the coveted ESPY award for outstanding American sports achiever of the year.

Sports Illustrated had her on the cover of its swimsuit edition, which the photogenic Vonn admitted was "a once in a lifetime opportunity".

"It was nerve-wracking being in a swimsuit in front of people who were taking pictures, not something I am used to".

And to cap it off, she had a guest appearance on her favourite television show, Law and Order.

Vonn loves the long-running US crime show - "I'm slightly obsessed by it," she quipped - and when the programme's creator Dick Wolf read that, he was on the phone.

"It was awesome, definitely one of the coolest things I've done since the Olympics."

And the future? Not coaching, but she'd like an involvement in the sport, and is keen to start charity work "to give something back".

"I want to travel for a bit, start a family, but I basically leave all doors open and see where life takes me."

A life which so far has been loaded with notable achievement. The autobiography should be a decent read.