corps" SCV group. It was during that first season Lindsey and her family were contemplating if the entire family should move from Minnesota to Colorado. "Vail was wonderful to me," Lindsey said, "but I missed all the traditional things of childhood – sleepovers, school dances, making friends in a conventional way. Halfway through the second season, Lindsey's siblings also moved to Vail. "Now all my brothers and sisters had left their friends for me. That was stressful on them. I felt so guilty." However, the move paid off because in 1999 Lindsey Kildow and Will McDonald became the first American athletes to win the "Cadets" slalom events in Italy's Trofeo Topolino di Sci Alpino. In 1986, Lindsey's hero, Picabo Street, participated, but did not medal, in the same Topolino event. In 1995 at age 10, Kildow met Street in person at a promotional event. A few years later, "Street was stunned watching a 15-year-old Lindsey ski for the first time in 1999. She marveled at Lindsey's knack for following the fall line. 'The faster she went, the bigger the smile she got on her face,' Street said. 'You can't teach somebody to love the fall line like that little girl loved the fall line.'" After climbing through the ranks of the U.S. Ski Team, she made her World Cup debut at age 16 on November 18, 2000, in Park City, Utah. 2002–2005 In her Olympic debut at the 2002 Winter Olympics at age 17, Kildow raced in both slalom and combined in Salt Lake City, with her best result coming with sixth in combined. On March 4, 2003, she earned a silver medal in downhill in the Junior World Championship at Puy Saint-Vincent, France. Kildow credits a change in her attitude toward training to a bike ride with fellow ski racer Julia Mancuso and Mancuso's father Ciro when Kildow visited them at their home in Lake Tahoe, California. With little biking experience, she quickly found herself miles behind Julia and Ciro. Alone and embarrassed, she realized she needed drastic revision of her training regimen and her attitude toward training if she was going to be successful. On March 24, 2004, Kildow was the downhill silver medalist at the U.S. Alpine Championships at Mt. Alyeska Resort, Girdwood, Alaska. Earlier that year 2004, Kildow climbed onto the World Cup podium for the first time with a third-place finish in downhill in January