Winter Olympics 2026: Lindsey Vonn has ‘no regrets,’ says ACL tear ‘had nothing to do’ with injury crash that will require multiple surgeries
Lindsey Vonn made her first public statement Monday since her devastating injury crash in the alpine downhill competition on Sunday, declaring that she has “no regrets.”
The U.S. alpine skier crashed and suffered a fractured left leg that required surgery after she was airlifted from the Tofane slope at Cortina d’Ampezzo. She competed Sunday with a torn ACL sustained Jan. 30 in a World Cup race. The injury was to the the same leg that she fractured Sunday.
Vonn crashed near the top of the mountain, just 13 seconds into her run. The crash and her resulting injury have prompted debate over whether Vonn should have been competing at all on a torn ACL, given the risk of extreme bodily injury that comes with downhill skiing.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Vonn wrote that she has “no regrets” and that her ACL tear didn’t factor into the crash or her injury, which she described as a “complex tibia fracture.”
“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn wrote. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.”
Vonn explained that her crash and injury were strictly the result of her right arm hooking into a gate and sending her flying through the air off balance at a high rate of speed — not because of her previous ACL injury.
“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”
Vonn accompanied her post with an image showing her right arm hooked inside the gate.
Vonn added that she sustained a “complex tibia fracture” that “will require multiple surgeries to fix properly. She also wrote that she has “no regrets.”
Lindsey Vonn, seen here before an Olympic training run, addressed her crash and injury in an Instagram post on Monday. (STEFANO RELLANDINI via Getty Images)
Vonn, 41, did not address her future in the sport. But this injury is expected to end her competitive career. Earlier Monday, Vonn’s father, Alan Kildow, told The Associated Press that he hopes that she retires. If she does, she’ll retire as one of the sport’s most decorated and respected athletes.
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Vonn is a three-time Olympic medalist. She won gold in the downhill competition and bronze in the super-G in Vancouver in 2010. She secured bronze in the downhill in 2018 in PyeongChang.
Vonn has a prolific World Cup record featuring 84 gold medals, 38 silvers and 23 bronzes across six disciplines. She was the 2009 world champion in both downhill and super-G.
Vonn retired in 2019 only to come out of retirement in 2024 following a knee replacement. She remained competitive at 41 years old in a sport where downhill skiers tend to hit their prime in their late 20s. She finished second in a World Cup super-G event in January. Prior to her crash, she was considered a threat to medal in both the downhill and super-G competitions at the Olympics.
