Lindsey Vonn, still waiting on ACL surgery, faces ‘another long road’ to recovery
Lindsey Vonn is still another surgery and several months away from a full recovery from the February crashes before and at the Winter Olympics that left her with a torn ACL and a severely broken leg, the American Alpine skiing star said Sunday.
“I still have another surgery, so I’m trying to get as strong as possible,” Vonn told TNT Sports in an interview at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. “And once I get my ACL, then I’ll have another long road ahead of me. But for now, I feel great, and I’m very thankful for that.”
Vonn tore her ACL in a crash in a World Cup race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Jan. 30, just a week before the Olympics began. Even with the injury, she vowed to compete in the Milan Cortina Games and was in the starting gate for the downhill on Feb. 8. Just 13 seconds into her run, though, she hooked a gate going over a rise and was sent spinning through the air before tumbling violently into the snow. She was airlifted off the mountain and taken to a local hospital, where she spent eight days recovering.
Lindsey Vonn crashes out in women’s downhill
Matt Slater
The Olympic crash left her with a “complex tibia fracture” that required multiple surgeries to save from being amputated. The ACL injury still has not been repaired, she said Sunday.
“I’m hoping that I can have the (ACL) surgery in November, but it’ll be in the winter sometime, and then it’ll be another nine months until I’m fully recovered from that, so I can’t really look beyond that,” she said. “I don’t really know what the future holds, but like I said, I’m just thankful for where I am right now.”
That timeline would mean Vonn, 41, will not be fully recovered until next summer or fall. She has repeatedly said she does not know whether she will attempt to race again.
“I may retire. I may never race again and that would be completely fine,” Vonn told the Associated Press in April. “But I’m not in a position emotionally to make that decision at this point.”
Vonn’s crash just seconds into her downhill run at February’s Olympics left her with a severely broken leg in addition to the torn ACL she had suffered a week earlier. (Jacquelyn Martin / AP)
Vonn was already a legendary figure in Alpine skiing when she retired in 2019 due to the mounting toll of injuries in a sport famously rife with them. She was a three-time Olympic medalist, including gold in the downhill in 2010, and winner of a record 20 crystal globes — the award given to the season-long winners in each discipline and overall.
A right knee replacement in 2024 left her pain-free and contemplating a return to ski racing. She announced her comeback in October 2024 and returned to World Cup races by December of that year. At the season-end World Cup finals in March 2025, she made it back to a podium with a second-place finish in the super-G in Sun Valley, Idaho.
That result was just the beginning. Last December, Vonn won the season-opening downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, her first World Cup victory in nearly eight years. A month later, in Austria, she scored another downhill win — her 84th career World Cup victory, more than any speed skier in history and trailing only slalom stars Mikaela Shiffrin of the U.S. and Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden on the all-time list. She finished no worse than fourth in any of her first eight World Cup races, making her a clear medal favorite as the Olympics approached.
Then came Crans-Montana. In the final World Cup race before the Winter Games, just nine days before the Olympic downhill, Vonn slipped around an early sharp turn, fell to the snow and slid into the netting. She got up and skied down but was clearly in pain. Days later, she revealed she had torn her ACL in her left knee in the crash but said she would still compete at the Olympics. (An ACL tear can be a more manageable injury for skiers compared to other sports.)
In Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, two training sessions were successful, and Vonn ultimately achieved the goal she had set in her improbable comeback — making it to the starting gate for the Olympic downhill — before the early crash brought a brutal end to her dream of another Olympic medal.
“My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever,” she said in a social media post the day after her Olympic crash. “While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget.”