By Alan Baldwin
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Lindsey Vonn said her Olympic dream was not over despite a downhill crash landing her in hospital on Friday, a week before the start of the Milano Cortina Games, and her painful past lends hope to that assertion.
The 41-year-old speed queen and golden great of U.S. Alpine skiing has a history of hurt and knows more about comebacks than most.
She also boasts a medical record as long as her success story, and one not for the faint-hearted.
Those who have written her off in the past have been proven wrong time and again.
The winner of 84 World Cup races and four overall titles, as well as 2010 Olympic downhill gold medallist, has taken her battered body to age-defying heights this season with two wins and five podiums in five downhills before Friday’s fall in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
“This is a very difficult outcome a week before the Olympics,” she said on Instagram, confirming an injured left knee. “But if there is one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback.
“My Olympic dream is not over. Thank you for all the love and support. It’s not over until it’s over.”
U.S. broadcaster NBC had brought Vonn and Hollywood movie actor Scarlett Johansson together to promote their 2026 Olympics coverage in a light-hearted “battle of the scars” fireside chat.
In it, some of the skier’s more dramatic falls were compared to Johansson’s big screen scrapes filming ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ in a world of CGI dinosaurs.
What Vonn has been through over the decades is no joke, however.
‘EPIC CRASH’ BEFORE TURIN GAMES
In 2006, in training for the downhill at the Turin Olympics, she suffered what she called an “epic crash” and had to be taken by helicopter off the mountain. Two days later she finished eighth.
She headed into the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics as a standout star and medal contender in five events but suffered a shin injury during pre-Games training in Austria two weeks earlier.
“Now I’m questioning whether I’ll be able to ski,” she said at the time.
And then, with bad weather giving an extra day to recover, she gritted her teeth and went on to win the gold in downhill — her first Olympic medal.
Vonn missed the Sochi 2014 Games after partially tearing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and injuring her right knee in a downhill training fall at Copper Mountain.
In August 2015 she broke an ankle, then fractured her left knee in February 2016 and broke her right arm that November.
Retiring in 2019, saying she had got to the point physically where it no longer made sense to continue, Vonn underwent knee replacement surgery in 2024 and everything changed again, with Cortina the big target and prize to aim for.
The smart Italian resort was where she took her first podium and broke Annemarie Moser-Proell’s record of most World Cup wins by a female skier, a mark now well-beaten by compatriot Mikaela Shiffrin, with her 63rd in 2015.
No skier has won more times in Cortina.
“If the Olympics were in some random place, like in an obscure land that I’ve never been to, I don’t think I would have any interest in doing it,” she told reporters last month.
“Cortina is the draw. Cortina is the reason. It’s a very meaningful place to me… it feels like home.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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