Ski icon Lindsey Vonn defends her decision to compete at the Games, despite undergoing surgery for a fracture in her left foot.
American ski athlete Lindsey Vonn said Monday that she suffered a “complex tibia fracture” when she crashed on the slopes at the Winter Olympics and will require “multiple surgeries.”
“Although yesterday didn’t end the way I expected, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets,” Vonn said on her social media from the hospital in Italy where she is being treated.
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Vonn, 41, insisted that the rupture of her anterior cruciate ligament in a crash in a World Cup race before the Milan-Cortina Games “had nothing to do with my accident”.
She added, “I was just 5 inches too tight on my line when my right hand got caught inside the gate, causing me to spin and resulting in a crash.”
“I suffered a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to heal properly.”
In her first statement after the accident, Vonn said: “My Olympic dream didn’t pan out the way I dreamed it would. This wasn’t a storybook or fairy tale ending, it was just life. I dared to dream and worked very hard to achieve it.
“Because in downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as little as 5 inches.”
Vonn crashed badly just 13 seconds after starting the race. He was evacuated from the piste by a rescue helicopter and is being treated in a hospital in Treviso.
She resumed her career in late 2024 after nearly six years of retirement and was considered a strong favorite for downhill at these Olympics after recording seven World Cup podium finishes, including two wins, before a pre-Olympic crash in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
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