Lindsey Vonn opened a press conference Tuesday morning in Italy by saying that she had “completely ruptured” her ACL in in a crash at a World Cup race last Friday in Switzerland.
Then came the shocking part: The 41-year-old still plans to race in the women’s downhill event on Sunday.
“I feel a lot better right now than I did in 2019 for the last world championships,” Vonn said. “And I still got a medal there with no LCL and three tibial plateau fractures. This is not an unknown for me; I’ve done this before.”
The three-time Olympic medalist retired from competitive skiing after those world championships and was away from the sport for five years before announcing a planned comeback in late 2024.
She had initially planned on competing in the downhill, Super G, and team race, but said Tuesday that she would have to see how her knee handled Sunday’s race. “I will do everything in my power to be in that starting gate,” she said.
Before the injury, Vonn’s comeback was one of the major storylines of the Games, and she appeared primed to win a medal. She won two of her seven World Cup races and led the World Cup standings, returning to the dominant form she had before injuries led her to retire.
Vonn said that she had raced—unknowingly—with a torn ACL before, at the 2014 Olympics, and that she planned to use a brace this weekend.
