Lindsey Vonn has arrived at a time-honoured formula to make some quick cash: Take off your clothes!

 On the same day that Forbes came out with their list of the richest Winter Olympics athletes, Sports Illustrated dropped their swimsuit issue.

And Vonn, America’s projected Olympic sweetheart and a legitimate favourite to head home with three gold medals, if not four, is front and centre like we’ve never seen here before, as they say. Forbes lists her as the third highest-earning winter Olympian, pulling in $3-million (US) last year and, well, Sports Illustrated has some tasteful pictures of her moneymaker.

For research purposes you’re welcome to visit and peruse yourself, but I’ll save you some time. The secret to her dominance on the World Cup circuit is plain: a tight, powerful torso and toned, muscular thighs which allow her to take lines others might not.

Vonn’s not the only member of the U.S. Olympics team to appear in the swimsuit issue. Joining here are Hannah Teter and Clair Bidez, both snowboarders and another skier, Lacy Schnoor.

Again, based on research, I’m here to report that the apparent secret to being an Olympic skier or snowboarder is a taut, powerful torso and toned, muscular thighs – as well as wind-blown blonde hair and muk-luks.

Hey – these races can be decided by the smallest fraction of a second, how do we know that the right muk-luks won’t be a factor?

Anyway. There is more to Vonn than meets the eye. She’s certainly positioned to be the biggest story to come out of these games, Canadian or not.

Tim Layden of Sports illustrated puts it all into context quite nicely in this article on SI.com. Vonn is not the first athlete to appear both on the cover of the magazine – she’s posed rather racily on the cover of the mag’s Olympic preview issue – and the swimsuit issue. She joins Maria Sharapova, Danica Patrick and Serena Williams in that regard, but she’s the first to be on the cover and in the swimsuit issue in consecutive weeks.

“This puts Vonn at a singular place at the intersection of sports and pop culture,” writes Leyden. She is not the first athlete pictured in the Swimsuit Issue. She is not even the first athlete to appear in both the Swimsuit Issue and on the cover of the magazine. … But she is most definitely the first athlete to appear on the cover of SI and in the Swimsuit Issue in the same one-week span, on the eve of performing in the event that will, in all likelihood, define her athletic career.

Vonn, 25, is already -- as the cover says -- the best American women's ski racer in history (and very much in the discussion for best U.S. ski racer of any gender).

She lacks only Olympic gold medals to finish the job. Vonn has 31 World Cup victories, one fewer than Bode Miller; Miller has two Olympic silver medals and Vonn has none. Yet. She is favored in two events at the upcoming Vancouver Games and a threat in two others.

That alone would be pressure enough. Vonn's situation is similar to Michael Phelps' at the 2008 Summer Games: She is expected to win medals, please sponsors and, to a great extent, carry NBC's broadcasts. As if to further challenge herself, Vonn decided to take off most of her clothing and pose alongside supermodels in a magazine issue that not only sells wildly, but also generates controversy.”

I think that’s what they call sponsorship activation.