MILAN — Lindsey Vonn, the greatest downhill skier in history whose comeback has been perhaps the biggest story leading up to the Milano Cortino Olympic Games, said she is confident she will compete in the downhill event Sunday despite fully rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament in a crash last week.
“My intention is to race everything,” Vonn, 41, said Tuesday, speaking with reporters for the first time since her crash Friday in a World Cup downhill in Crans-Montana.
Vonn was a heavy gold-medal favorite to win the Olympic downhill 16 years after she became the first American woman to win that event, seven years after injuries drove her into retirement, and nearly two years since undergoing partial knee replacement surgery.
“I know my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same as it stands today, but I know there is still a chance,” said Vonn, the leader in the current World Cup downhill standings. “And as long as there’s a chance, I will try.”
Vonn crashed early in the Crans-Montana downhill, the last World Cup downhill before the Olympics, sliding into safety nets and then tentatively skiing to the bottom of the course, stopping at some points to touch her left knee. She was later airlifted away for medical attention. Vonn said she “completely ruptured” ACL.” The competition was canceled shortly after Vonn’s crash.
“Last Friday, in Crans-Montana, in the last World Cup, I completely ruptured my ACL,” Vonn said Tuesday. “I also have bone bruising, which is a common injury. My knee is not swollen, and with the help of a knee brace, I am confident that I can compete on Sunday.”
Training on the Olympic downhill course at Cortina’s Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre is scheduled to start Thursday.
“We have been doing extensive therapy,” Vonn said “been consulting with doctors, been in the gym, and today, I went skiing, and considering how my knee feels, it feels stable; I feel strong.”
In making her way back to the top of the sport, Vonn has risen above the toll of a career that has included nine knee surgeries, one of which prevented her from defending her Olympic title at the 2014 Games in Sochi, and had left her unable to walk or even stand without being in pain.
Vonn was able to return to competitive skiing after undergoing partial knee replacement surgery on her right knee in April 2024. The procedure kept the ACL, the medial meniscus and cartilage on the knee’s inner part intact.
Within weeks of the surgery, she was thinking of Cortina. For the first time since 2013, Vonn was able to train without restrictions.
“And I can literally do anything,” she said. “So I think I’m in potentially the best shape of my life, which is saying something at my age.”
“The reason I’m here is because I had a partial knee replacement last April,” Vonn said in October. “I really thought when I retired in 2019 that was it. I had an amazing life. I was really happy. But then after the replacement, I knew things were really different. My body felt so good. I just kept kind of pushing myself further and further to see what I was capable of and skiing and racing seemed so it wasn’t really a leap for me to say I want to come back and compete in these Olympics.
“This is different because I have nothing to prove. I closed my career and I definitely would like to close that chapter in maybe a better way than I did in 2019, but I feel like I’m light. I’m happy. I’m free. I’m doing it to prove I love it. I’m not doing it to prove anything to anyone. I also have a lot more perspective now, having been away from the sport for six years. I think that just allows me to compete in a different way. To be at the starting gate with a different perspective. I think that gives me an advantage actually.”
Vonn said she also still plans to compete in the Super G competition on Feb. 12 and the women’s team combined event two days earlier.
“My intention is to ski everything,” Vonn said. “That’s obviously my goal. I mean, I’ll finish the season if I can. But I don’t know, I can’t tell you that until I know I have the downhill training run and see how I feel.
“If it remains the way it is now, I feel solid.”
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