Untold story of Picabo in film from Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn and Picabo Street are two of the greatest names in American ski racing history. Their day at Deer Valley began as an early morning filming session, but soon became an experience filled with fun, emotion and reminiscing amidst synchronized turns together. The kinship the two have had for nearly three decades forged an even deeper bond that day. 

Two skiers relaxed in front of a crackling fire at the Goldener Hirsch hotel at Deer Valley Resort. Their smiles told the story as they sat in sheepskin-lined chairs, their stocking feet up on a stool, laughing and cackling about the first tracks they enjoyed together that morning.

The drama of Street’s star-studded career, and often turbulent life, is played out in a new documentary film PICABO, part of the Five Rings Films collection from the Olympic Channel and the International Olympic Committee. It is directed by none other than Vonn herself, along with legendary Hollywood producer Frank Marshall (think Indiana Jones, Bourne, E.T., Back to the Future)

The film premiered on Peacock TV in the USA, as well as on Olympics.com around the rest of the world.

Story that needed to be told

If you’re a young ski racer today, you probably know the name of Picabo Street. But you won’t likely know her story. Street’s decade of prominence from the World Cup to world championships to Olympics was the first period of sustained success by an American speed skier at the highest level.

All told, she won 13 World Cup downhills, two crystal globes, three world championship medals including downhill gold, plus Olympic gold and silver medals. In 1998, she and teammate Hilary Lindh combined to win all but one of the eight World Cup downhills. In her entire career, she won just a single super-G. But it was the right one!

Street came along at just the right time for ski racing in America. The glory days of the ‘80s, with Phil and Steve Mahre, Tamara McKinney and a host of others, had passed. Results on the world stage were sparse. Then, almost at the flip of a switch, the upstart young ski racer from Sun Valley changed the narrative.

“Picabo put ski racing back on the map,” said teammate Heidi Voelker. “All of a sudden ski racing was being talked about in people’s households.”

The history books will show Vonn’s record 82 World Cup wins, as well as Mikaela Shiffrin’s now 73 victories. Street won only 13 World Cups. But what set her apart in her era was her pioneering grittiness and charisma, setting the stage for literally the next two decades of American ski racing. She was a personality who made headlines. And ski racing needed that. Each victory was parlayed into public exposure for her sport.

“There are some people you know when they enter the room and there are some people who you don’t realize they came,” said her coach Herwig Demschar. “When Picabo came into the room, you knew she was there!”

Paul Major, her first U.S. Ski Team coach and later alpine director, was at the forefront with Street. And it wasn’t always pretty. Major booted Street off the team early in her career, then helped her forge her pathway to the top. 

“She just had a big heart, liked people, and was naturally inclined to help people,” said Major. “I think that helped pave the way for Lindsey and a whole new generation of skiers.”

Amidst it all, Street balanced a non-conventional and sometimes challenging family situation that brought her the highest of highs, mixed in with the lowest of lows.

Picabo Unfiltered

In the first minute of PICABO, you’re hit with myriad storylines of the freckle-faced young girl from little-known Triumph, Idaho, not far from Sun Valley. You quickly learn that this isn’t just a ski film – it’s a complex family story woven together with the thread of downhill ski racing. 

At times, the film is very raw and unfiltered. It takes viewers down race courses at 70 mph, goes bedside in surgical units and into audio from 911 calls.

But what ski racing fans will most appreciate is that it is done from the viewpoint of Street and Vonn together, two of the sport’s greatest of all time, as they reunite for the film and create an even tighter bond together as friends. As viewers, we are just along for the ride – a very fascinating ride!

The film pulls back the curtain on the story of Street and her family, a tight-knit clan that gave her the tools for success but often forced her to navigate troubled waters with a roller coaster ride that played out off the race course. It’s a story she’s never fully divulged. 

“It was definitely a challenge and was very therapeutic to do it,” said Street. “I’ve had to lean in to who I am and what I’ve done in my life, and the impact that I’ve had and the impact that I can have.” 

It’s now been two decades since Street’s last ski race. Most of that time, she’s been a mom, shepherding three now teenaged boys. One of the big motivating factors to her willingness to bare her soul was so that her sons could better understand their mom and what she represented. It was a life-changing experience for her.

“My kids understanding me throughout this film is a big part of me being able to connect the mom that I am now to the athlete that I was and somehow figure out how to merge them into my future,” she said.

But Street doesn’t stop at her family. True to her character when she was a dominant force on the World Cup tour, she always genuinely cared about others. She would spend hours with kids after events. If she learned of someone’s hardship, she would pitch in to help. She was a mom to all on the tour.

“I’ve had to excavate a lot of wounds and faced a lot of stuff that hasn’t been easy or comfortable,” said Street. “But the way that I’ve looked at it is, like, I’ve been through a lot of things that could really help people in their own lives. It’s time to share those things as part of my excavating and healing, and as part of me extending a reach to say, ‘I see you. I see you in your situation. I pray for strength while you’re in it, and I pray for freedom when you get out of it to be able to excavate and heal like I have.’ So there’s that part of it, right?”

Most of all, though, was telling the story of her family. Her mother, Dee, her late father, Ron, and her brother Baba were constantly at her side. 

Through the family challenges, there remained a deep passion. “There’s the love story of my family and my brother always being there,” she recalled, with pangs of emotion in her voice.

Father Ron was driving a resort bus in Sun Valley when the legendary Jean-Claude Killy climbed on board. The proud father of the teenaged Picabo told Killy, “my daughter is going to be a great ski racer. You’ll meet her some day.” The 1968 Olympic champion never forgot. And in 1998, as he was presenting her the Olympic gold medal in Nagano, he whispered in her ear to remind her of the story.

Street was just 16 when she made her World Cup debut at Aspen in March, 1988. It was a weekend that changed her life as a ski racer and a person. 

“So my family being as tight as it was throughout my career, I wanted people to understand that my dad was diagnosed with diabetes the same weekend I raced in Aspen in my first World Cup,” she recalled “And so his disease and our phone calls back and forth were two-way calls. Everyone saw it as though I was letting everybody know that I’m OK because I just finished the race when in reality, I needed information from the other side of the phone saying, ‘you guys are okay too?’”

Her father’s management of his diabetes became a big part of her roller coaster ride. “That’s part of the story that not everybody knew was going on and that I want people to understand,” she said. “He was my superman, and my all-in advocate and the person who believed in me the most. But he was also my biggest distraction. He spent his entire adult life in denial of his diabetes.”

That closeness as a family is showcased with Picabo today, raising three outdoor-loving teenage boys with her fiancé Jake. In the closing minutes of the film is a fun-loving scene as Picabo, Jake and the boys are fat biking on a trail along a mountain stream as Street philosophizes on the value of motherhood.

“Better than skiing?” asks Vonn in the interview. “Better than anything on the planet,” said Street.

For those who knew Street during her ski racing career, the scene is simply joyous – truly capturing the person she has become and the motherly love she has for this phase of her life.

Her motivation to ski race

As a young girl, she was always chasing her brother. Picabo Street was the consummate tomboy. One day she waited until Baba went in the house, then grabbed his ski gear, booted up and climbed the steep hill behind their house in Triumph. Baba caught her, but also saw her talent. “You know, you can turn,” she recalls Baba telling her. “Why?” was her response.

She didn’t watch television until she was 13. When she did, she saw Christin Cooper, Debbie Armstrong and Tamara McKinney at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984. She knew instantly that that was her calling.

As a  young girl, her father would take her to Sun Valley for first tracks. At the top, he told her to keep up as they headed to the bowls, or meet them at the car at 4:00 p.m. “I had no lunch money,” she said. “I had to keep up.”

When Street made her intentions known to her family that she wanted to be the best ski racer in the world, they all bought in. It was a family affair that continued through her entire career. They were always at her side.

Evolution of a film

The film was an outgrowth of years of discussion, emanating from the global Olympic Channel and bringing in Marshall, a legendary director and former board member of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Marshall and Street had formed a bond at the 1998 Olympics when she was a central character in Olympic Glory, an IMAX film by Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy.

PICABO is also the first project of Vonn’s new company, Après Productions. With Marshall as her mentor, Vonn was hands-on, helping direct the documentary and spending hours personally interviewing her childhood idol during what became a very heartfelt and emotional day.

In making the film, Vonn drew on the inspiration that Street had provided her nearly 30 years earlier. “Picabo’s personality and her ability to connect with me as a child was what made me a fan,” said Vonn. “She was authentic and confident – exactly what I wanted to be.”

“Just the honor to have Lindsey to have chosen me to be her first documentary was – I almost don’t have the words to describe it – it was such an honor,” said Street. “She’s so passionate about skiing and skiing history. It just took everything to another level. I needed to step up and embrace it.”

Behind the scenes, Olympic Channel executive producer Greg Groggel, a skier himself, took special pride in the project. “I was surprised at how vulnerable she was,” he said about Street. “She has a tough shell but she’s very caring on the inside. I hope the audience will see that dreams can come true, no matter where you come from, and how much Olympic athletes give of themselves in their commitment to excellence. If you have the right vision, focus, discipline, and dedication, you can overcome even the greatest obstacles, both personal and physical.”

Vonn echoed the sentiments. “I’m excited for people to learn how Picabo became Picabo,” she said. “Everyone knows the well spoken, charismatic downhill skier but no one knows entirely what she went through to get to where she did. She broke many glass ceilings so that women like me could achieve our dreams.”

Ski racing fans will be struck by the large volume of historical action footage and interviews in the film. First off, being a production of the Olympic Channel, editors had access to Olympic footage, including her 1998 gold medal run and her 2002 farewell. But producers also benefited from the vast archive of Jalbert Productions. Legendary ski racing cinematographer Joe Jay Jalbert had his own crews actively following Street for much of her career. That footage allowed producers to truly weave a narrative with race footage and behind the scenes interviews that gives the documentary a feeling of great authenticity and access.

Pinnacle of her career

The film vividly illustrates how nothing in Street’s career came easy. Every step of the way was complex and entangled in side stories. And such was the case with her biggest moment in the spotlight, her Olympic gold in 1998.

A season earlier in December 1996, Street, then the reigning world downhill champion, crashed hard coming into the infamous Huey, Dewey and Louie rollers in training for the World Cup downhill in Vail, decimating her left knee. That February at the pre-Olympic downhill in Hakuba, a mountain village outside of Nagano, she came down the run on the back of coach Konrad Rickenbach. It would be the only time she would see the course before the Olympics.

She was back on snow in July 1997, but her Olympic season was mixed – only coming close to the podium once with a fourth in Cortina d’Ampezzo. Still, she felt strong as she headed to Japan with her characteristic Picabo ‘can-do’ attitude.

The film explores the chaotic day of the super-G at Happo One in Hakuba. Weather had already pushed the opening downhill later. So super-G was the speed debut. In an interview, coach Herwig Demschar takes viewers back to that day as coaches recommended to Street that with a straight course set, they would go with longer downhill skis for speed. They spirited the skis in near secrecy up to the start. And she won by a hundredth of a second.

“That super-G attacked all of us,” said Street, getting animated as she recalled the day. “I cross blocked one of the gates coming into the flats.”

To many, her win that day was improbable. But it was that grittiness and sense of victory that characterized her entire career which brought a smile to her face as coaches hoisted her into the air in the finish.

“I’d have to say that Nagano is probably the pinnacle for sure,” said Street. “Especially when I watch myself race and how strong I was in my approach to the course.”

When she thinks back to that day, the circumstances with the course set, she doesn’t look at the improbability of a win, but more the opportunity she had.

“When you run a super-G, there’s a clean, fresh slate – that clean canvas that a super-G gives you,” she said. “ Even though it’s in the speed discipline, it’s still just a one look, one shot run. So it’s kind of an anomaly. There’s this kind of this roll of the dice thing that you do in super-G, to where you take some risks that you wouldn’t in downhill because you’re trying to be more calculated. It is kind of a wild card. 

“I took advantage of that element that day of it being a super-G. It was anyone’s game and having an early number (she skied second), knowing that I had the snow conditions. It was that combination that brought it all together that just sent it to a whole other level.”

The Olympic super-G victory vaulted Street and her charismatic personality onto the world stage. No longer was she just a ski racing star. She had become a global sports celebrity.

But the glow was short-lived. A few weeks later, on Friday March 13th, Street smacked hard into the plastic fencing in a downhill at Crans Montana. The accident shattered her left femur, a life-threatening injury, and left her with four fractures. Her right knee was shredded.

She more or less took up residence in Vail, as a patient at the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic for what would be a long recovery with multiple surgeries. It would be two-and-a-half years before she would race again as she battled through both physical and mental rehabilitation. She would not return to the World Cup podium.

Street skied her final downhill at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. She was 16th. She recalls the day vividly, and the film takes viewers into the finish line at Snowbasin for her farewell address.

As she took a bow for the crowd, NBC commentator and Olympic silver medalist Christin Cooper called her the best downhiller of all time. “Nothing but admiration for this Olympic champion who, by all rights, shouldn’t have even been a contender here,” said Cooper. “The greatest American downhiller takes her final bow.”

“I just hugged Lindsey Kildow,” said Street in true motherly fashion in the grainy, archival footage. “ She’s 17 years old, first time in the Olympics, getting the jitters out of the system,”

Little did either of them know where Lindsey’s path would lead.

Friends skiing together

Amidst all the exhilaration of downhill ski racing and the strife of Street’s tumultuous life portrayed in the film, what brought it all together were the joyous scenes of Street and Vonn just enjoying turns together in the early morning light – the same joy that recreational skiers live for every day.

In the more than quarter century Street and Vonn have known each other, it was the first time they had just kicked back and skied for fun. Street led Vonn down Stein’s Way pointing down towards the Jordanelle Reservoir. Drone footage captures the majestic setting and perfectly carved turns in the early morning glow. Two of the sport’s very best just out for a few turns.

“What did you love about skiing?” Vonn asks her on the chairlift ride. “I fell in love with the speed – being able to harness that,” replied Street. “I like making it feel not out of control.”

Vonn replied, “Skiing was always the outlet where I felt the most in control.”

Here were two of the sport’s most accomplished heroes, who made their mark arcing downhill skis into the fall line of the Olimpia delle Tofane in Cortina d’Ampezzo and in the bitter cold of Lake Louise, simply enjoying a ski day together ripping down manicured cruisers at Deer Valley.

In her book Rise, Vonn recalled the day she first met Picabo in 1994. “I remember the whole thing clear as day,” she wrote. “There were so many people waiting to meet her. … I was nervous as I walked up to her – I didn’t have high or low expectations, it’s more that I didn’t know what to expect. 

“But that all melted away the moment I met her. Picabo was just so vibrant. She had this charisma about her that was tangible and infectious. Everything about her captivated me. She was really kind and gracious, in the way she conducted herself and in everything she did, and that put me at ease. 

“I wanted to be just like her.”

Near the end of Vonn’s daylong interview with Street, she reached down to grab a framed poster of Street, which she had signed in 1994. Today, the winner of 82 World Cups looks up at that poster on her bedroom wall every evening. Street choked up, visibly moved as memories rushed back.

Just nine at the time, Vonn (then Lindsey Kildow) joined hundreds of kids at Peirce Skate & Ski in St. Paul to meet the legendary Street after her 1994 Olympic silver in Lillehammer. 

“You still have that?” exclaimed a shocked Street. The two broke down in tears.

PICABO tells the untold story of Picabo Street. But it also opens the door to Lindsey Vonn, what ignited her passion as a young girl and the influence Street had on her career. It also tells the story of a sport, where its participants find reward in its heritage and its sense of family.

“When I was a little kid I wanted to be famous,” said a teenaged Lindsey Kildow in a ‘90s vintage clip. “And I want to be the most decorated skier of all time.”

In an interview about the same time, Street talks about how she views her own legacy, talking about Vonn and Julia Mancuso, at the time rising young teen stars.

“They want what I’ve gotten and more,” said Street. “That, to me, is what I want to see when I look in their eyes. I don’t want to walk away from the sport and (have) set some pretty big footsteps that may not be stepped in.”

Don’t worry, Picabo. You did just fine.

WHERE TO WATCH

PICABO is available now on Peacock TV, free to subscribers. Just go to peacocktv.com to stream. Outside the USA, it’s available worldwide on Olympics.com.

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