Lindsey Vonn, one of the greatest ski racers in history, made a striking appearance at the U.S. Open tennis tournament on Sunday, but the 41-year-old’s message was sobering: her road back from the devastating leg injury she suffered at the Winter Olympics in February is far from over.
Vonn tore her ACL in a World Cup race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on Jan. 30, just a week before the Games. She vowed to compete anyway. In the Olympic downhill on Feb. 8, she hooked a gate 13 seconds into her run, spun through the air, and tumbled violently into the snow. Airlifted off the mountain, she spent eight days in a local hospital. The crash left her with a complex tibia fracture that required multiple surgeries to save her leg from amputation.
The ACL, she said Sunday, still hasn’t been repaired. “I still have another surgery, so I’m trying to get as strong as possible,” Vonn told TNT Sports at the U.S. Open. “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.”
She’s hoping to have the ACL surgery in November, though she says it could be anytime this winter. “Then it’ll be another nine months until I’m fully recovered from that, so I can’t really look beyond that,” she said. That timeline means Vonn wouldn’t be fully recovered until at least next summer or fall.
Whether she’ll ever race again remains an open question. “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.”
The comeback story she had been writing was nothing short of remarkable. Vonn retired in 2019 after a career filled with injuries. A right knee replacement in 2024 left her pain-free for the first time in years, and she returned to the World Cup in December 2024. By March 2025, she was back on the podium, finishing second in the super-G at Sun Valley, Idaho.
Then came the wins. Last December, she took the season-opening downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland—her first World Cup victory in nearly eight years. A month later in Austria, she scored her 84th career World Cup victory, more than any speed skier in history, trailing only Mikaela Shiffrin and Ingemar Stenmark on the all-time list. She finished no worse than fourth in her first eight races of the season, making her a clear medal favorite heading into the Olympics.
Then Crans-Montana happened. Nine days before the Olympic downhill, Vonn slipped on an early sharp turn, fell, and slid into the netting. She got up and skied down, clearly in pain. Days later, she revealed the ACL tear but said she would still compete. At the venue in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, she made it through two training sessions and achieved the improbable goal of standing in the starting gate for the Olympic downhill. The crash ended her dream, but she expressed no regrets the next day.
“My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever,” she wrote in a social media post. “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.”
At the U.S. Open, Vonn wore a tight green dress, a fashion statement that drew attention even as she discussed her recovery. She remains in a period of waiting—waiting for surgery, waiting for recovery, waiting to decide what comes next. For now, she said, she’s just grateful for where she is.
