Lindsey Vonn may be retiring from her professional competitive skiing career, but the longtime Under Armour sponsored athlete won’t be ending her partnership with the iconic athletic brand anytime soon.
Vonn announced her newest endeavor with Under Armour on Instagram Tuesday morning. She’s set to become the first face and ambassador of Under Armour’s Project Rock brand, a collection designed for athletes to continue pushing themselves in the gym and at home, when they are or are not competing.
The Project Rock line was started by multi-hyphenate star (and PEOPLE’s 2016 Sexiest Man Alive) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has been a long time partner of Under Armour.
“Proud to welcome @LindseyVonn as our first ever #ProjectRock Ambassador,” he shared on Instagram. “A woman who I’ve known, admired and respected over the years. The hardest worker in the room. The best worker in the room.”
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“I am so excited to be on team Project Rock,” Vonn tells PEOPLE exclusively. “What I find so inspiring about Dwayne is that he always gives 110% in everything that he does. He basically stands for 100% authenticity and 100% effort.”
Under Armour’s Project Rock’s previous launches have garnered much success, including the Project Rock 1 athletic sneaker designed by Johnson last year, which sold out in under 30 minutes. Project Rock has also been named a top celebrity-brand partnership in the fashion and retail sector, according to research company Spotted.
Vonn skied the final race of her professional Alpine skiing career — and made history while doing it — last month. She won the bronze in the women’s downhill at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, making her the first female skier to win medals at six different world championships, according to ESPN.
“I’m literally tapped out, I can’t cry anymore,” Vonn said, according to the Associated Press. “I want to cry but it’s dry… It’s not an easy thing to feel your bones hitting together and continue to push through it.”
The Olympian had initially planned to retire at the end of the 2018-2019 season, but her extensive knee injuries have forced her to push up her timeline to after the World Championships in Sweden in February.
“It’s been an emotional tow weeks making the hardest decision of my life, but I have accepted that I cannot continue ski racing,” Vonn wrote on Instagram, alongside a slideshow of images from throughout her career. “I will compete at the World Championships in Downhill and SG next week in Åre, Sweden and they will be the final races of my career.”
“I have always pushed the limits of ski racing and it has allowed me to have amazing success but also dramatic crashes. I have never wanted the storyline of my career to be about injuries and because of that I decided not to tell anyone that I underwent surgery this past spring,” she added, sharing the information for the first time. “A large portion of cartilage that had delaminated from my bone was removed.”
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