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Lindsey Vonn is going to try to compete in the Alpine Ski event at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
On a torn ACL.
Since bursting on the scene as a 17-year-old phenom at the 2002 Winter Games, the now 41-year-old has cemented her legacy as one of the best Alpine skiers of all time. She won Olympic gold in 2010. Three Olympic medals total across five Games, eight world championship medals and 84 World Cup wins.
Vonn has become one of the most decorated figures in the sport. She retired, took a five-year hiatus from 2019 to 2024 to find her identity off the mountain, found it and her love for the sport again, and returned.
Now, just days before her first event in her last Olympics, Vonn confirmed that she ruptured her ACL during a crash after failing to navigate a sharp turn during a recent World Cup race in Switzerland.
However, Vonn is still going to try to compete. Not for Olympic gold, she’s won that already before. Not even to place, she’s done that plenty, too. Moreso to inspire those after her, and complete a comeback mission regardless of result or circumstance.
“She wants it, she doesn’t need it anymore,” said Dr. Armando Gonzalez, Vonn’s mental health coach since 2020. “For her, this whole thing has really been about ‘I love skiing, (and) my biggest purpose in life is to inspire the next generation of young girls with grit and determination. I’m living out my ethics and values.’”
Gonzalez began working with Vonn in 2020, shortly after she retired. He is a part of the medical team featured in a short film surrounding Vonn’s comeback by the Scrubs company FIGS. He worked with her to rediscover her identity off the mountain after her initial retirement and has helped intermittently since she began her journey back onto it.
Vonn had a robot-assisted partial replacement on her right knee in April 2024, which fixed cartilage damage.
Her most recent injury is in her left knee.
According to Dr. Kevin Stone, an orthopedic surgeon at the Stone Clinic in San Francisco and former U.S. Ski Team physician with decades of work with athletes, it’s possible the tear can be overcome.
There are multiple types of tears of the anterior cruciate ligament, tasked with connecting the femur and tibia and providing general knee stability. Stone said some knee joints are “ACL independent,” meaning that even if an ACL is partially torn, the joint doesn’t lose stability. Stone knows of many people who chose not to have surgery in that case and have healed naturally.
Vonn suffered the injury in her last race before the Milan Olympic Games began. (Fabrice Coffrini / Getty Images)
He said that could be the case here, and if so, it’s possible that Vonn “certainly has all the skill and mindset coaching and equipment to try to do that.”
However, if it’s a full tear that’s destabilizing to the joint?
“The likelihood of more injury is extremely high,” Stone said. “So because of that, doctors, while cheering on her determination, would be extremely cautious about clearing her to do a downhill race.”
After an ACL injury, acutely, in the first few weeks to a month, the knee is swollen and sensitive. With further usage, there’s a high likelihood of other injuries, such as bone bruises or meniscus tears. Furthermore, there isn’t a brace that adequately controls the knee, according to Stone.
And that’s just for an average human being.
Olympic downhill skier traverses an icy slope (“a vertical hockey rink,” Stone calls it) at breakneck 70-80 mile-per-hour speeds, executing inch-perfect maneuvers around gates and completing jumps.
At that speed and conditions, the snow is unforgiving. Synergy between mind and body is a base requirement not for success but survival.
To make turns, the ACL is tasked with providing stability to the angulation of the tibia and femur bones that are doing the turning. It is also relied upon in landing from jumps to stabilize the knee underneath your body.
It is a subconscious calculation with all factors considered. Bottom line, a skier has to trust every muscle in their body to perform as intended.
Even if the ligament is only partially torn and somewhat capable of doing the correct function, a different factor is introduced to the survival equation, which, if overcorrected for, can lead to injuries in different parts of the knee and leg.
A factor that Vonn, no stranger to crashing or returning from crashing, has an equanimity with, according to Gonzalez.
Pain.
“She truly does have a different relationship to pain,” Gonzalez said. “She feels and experiences it differently, and it doesn’t move the needle for her like it does you and I … she does it innately.”
Vonn has overcome injuries before. In her final event, the 2019 World Championships, before previously retiring, she said she skied with knee injuries. She took home bronze in Åre, Sweden, that year. She said she skied in recent days, though not at full speed, and felt stable.
Pain will be present, but only at the confluence of her physical capabilities.
“Thankfully, actually, all of my experience in my life has given me a lot of confidence in what my body can and cannot do,” she said. “I’ve been in this position before. I know how to handle it. Even though I don’t want to be in this position, I know how to handle it.”
The 2010 AP Female Athlete of the Year, Vonn, has already established a legacy.
It’s possible she can successfully compete on her injured ACL and can postpone further recovery until after she’s reached the bottom of the Olympia delle Tofane in the Dolomite Mountains of Italy.
She also runs the risk of further re-injury to her ACL and everything around it.
When speaking about Vonn, Gonzalez evoked an age-old adage from basketball legend Michael Jordan:
“Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”
This isn’t about exclusive golden jewelry, but only to prove that if she can endure, then others can as well.
“She wants to be the living example of proof of (Jordan’s quote),” Gonzalez said. “In a world where there’s no need to step on the stage, especially if they’re not at their best, saying, ‘…Let the chips fall where they may. I’ve made it this far. Guess what? I’m rehabbing one way or another.’”
On Sunday, Vonn will start high on the mountain, already fractured. The world will wait to see if she reaches the bottom whole.
Or, at least, as whole as she started.
She’s determined to reach the finish line, regardless.
