In a message posted late Monday and cited by the Associated Press, Lindsey Vonn called the injury “currently stable” but said it “will require multiple surgeries to fix properly,” adding, “I have no regrets.”
Medical teams treated Vonn on the slope before she was flown by helicopter to a clinic in Cortina and then transferred to a hospital in Treviso, where she underwent an orthopedic operation to stabilize the fracture, ESPN reported. U.S. Ski & Snowboard said she was in stable condition under the care of American and Italian physicians.
What happened to Lindsey Vonn on the Olympic downhill course
The crash came less than two weeks after Vonn ruptured the ACL in her left knee in a World Cup fall in Switzerland, an injury she said did not cause the Olympic wipeout. In a Reuters report, she described the margin for error in downhill racing as “as small as five inches,” saying her right arm hooked inside the gate when she took a tight line.
Discussion about whether Vonn should have raced so soon after that knee injury followed her crash, even as teammates and officials emphasized that the fall came from a racing mistake, not the earlier tear. In a brief update carried by NBC Olympics, she reiterated that she had “no regrets” about taking the start.
Vonn’s father, Alan Kildow, told the Associated Press that he wants her to retire after the crash, saying, “She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career.”
Lindsey Vonn’s comeback story, from retirement to Milan-Cortina
For Lindsey Vonn, the scene in Cortina echoed a career defined by comebacks and hard landings. After a 2013 world championships crash that left her with torn knee ligaments and a bone fracture, she pledged to return for the next Olympics, according to Sports Illustrated’s report.
Vonn first stepped away in 2019 amid chronic knee pain, a decision announced by U.S. Ski & Snowboard. She reopened the comeback conversation in 2024, telling the world she was returning to the U.S. Ski Team after a partial knee replacement, as detailed in an AP story about her comeback.
Before the crash, Lindsey Vonn arrived in Italy as a four-time overall World Cup champion with 84 career World Cup wins and a 2010 Olympic downhill gold medal, and she had posted strong downhill results this season. With Vonn out, teammate Breezy Johnson won gold in the downhill as the Games’ alpine program moved on.
