Lindsey Vonn posts new update after Olympic crash: ‘A long, long way to go’

Lindsey Vonn said she’s having another surgery Saturday before hoping to go home, where she’ll face another surgery. Stefano Rellandini / AFP via Getty Images

DOBBIACO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn on Friday provided another update on her condition following her crash last Sunday in the Olympic women’s downhill.

Vonn, the American Alpine skiing star who was trying to cap a remarkable comeback with another Olympic medal before her violent crash Sunday, posted a video to X and Instagram, saying she’s still facing more surgeries but hopes to be heading home soon.

“It’s been quite a hard few days in the hospital here,” she said. “I’m finally feeling more like myself, but I have a long, long way to go. Tomorrow, I’ll have another surgery, and hopefully that goes well, and then I can potentially leave and go back home, at which point I will need another surgery. Still don’t know exactly what that entails yet until I get some better imaging, but that’s kind of where I am right now.”

Just 13 seconds into her downhill run, Vonn hooked a gate with her right arm and got spun to the side as she went off a jump. With her skis turned 90 degrees, she had no chance to land safely and crashed hard into the snow. In a post on Monday, she said she suffered a “complex tibia fracture” in her left leg that would require multiple surgeries to fix.

In another post on Wednesday, Vonn said she’s already had three surgeries.

After the crash, she was airlifted to a hospital in Treviso, about 80 miles from the Olympia delle Tofane slope in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where the injury occurred.

“I am just in the hospital, very much immobile,” she said in Friday’s video. “But I have a lot of friends and family that have been coming to visit.”

With her head resting against a stuffed-animal shark, Vonn thanked those who had sent letters, flowers and gifts and said the medical staff had been “amazing.” She’s also been keeping an eye on the Olympics.

“Go Team USA. It’s been so great to watch and really lifted my spirits.”

Until about a week before the Olympics, the downhill race there was looking like it would be a coronation for Vonn, who returned to Alpine skiing in November 2024 after more than five years away. The mounting toll of leg injuries had forced her out in 2019, but a partial knee replacement in 2024 left her feeling pain-free.

In December 2024, she returned to the World Cup tour for the first time since early 2019.

After an up-and-down first season, Vonn was stellar this winter. She led the downhill standings with two wins in the discipline and finished no worse than fourth in any of the eight World Cup races she entered this season.

It was the one she didn’t finish that changed the tone in the lead-up to the Games. On Jan. 30, Vonn crashed in a downhill race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, just over a week before the Olympic downhill. She skied off the mountain that day but was visibly uncomfortable on the way down.

On Feb. 3, five days before the Olympic downhill, Vonn revealed she had a torn ACL after the crash but said she would try to ski on it anyway. She completed training runs on the Olympia delle Tofane last Friday and Saturday, looking ready for the challenge. Then came the crash, though Vonn insisted the torn ACL had nothing to do with it.

Had she medaled at 41, Vonn would’ve broken her record for the oldest woman to finish on an Olympic podium (Italy’s Federica Brignone, 35, ended up setting the new mark in Tuesday’s super-G). She has 84 World Cup wins, the third-most all-time, along with three Olympic medals and eight world championship medals.

Before the injury, she had said this season would be her last.

“I feel like I’m rolling the dice enough as it is, being 41 and putting myself through this,” she said in December.