Lindsey Vonn said she will need “multiple surgeries” after crashing in the women’s downhill event at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Sunday, but insisted she has “no regrets” about coming out of retirement and that her injured ACL had “nothing to do” with the accident.
The 41-year-old Olympic skier issued the health update on Instagram Monday, where she confessed that her “Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would.”
“It wasn’t a story book ending or a [fairytale] it was just life,” she wrote. “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 five inches.”
As Vonn continued, she explained that she was “simply five inches too tight” on her line, which cause her right arm to hook inside of the gate. Per Vonn, this action, and only this action, caused her crash.
“My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever,” she insisted amid speculation from viewers that she should not have skied in the event.
“Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly,” Vonn further wrote. “While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport.”
Vonn compared her Olympics injury to the trials of life, writing, “We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is the also the beauty of life; we can try.”
Before signing off her note, she added: “I tried. I dreamt. I jumped. I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying.”
As we previously reported, Vonn, one of the most accomplished female skiers of all time, crashed 13 seconds into her downhill run on Sunday after she was intent on a comeback — despite a fully torn ACL.
Vonn has suffered a number of high-profile injuries throughout her career, facing everything from broken bones to serious knee ligament tears. She originally retired from professional skiing in February 2019 after winning gold and bronze medals at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and a bronze medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang games.
On Monday, Vonn’s father Alan Kildow told the Associated Press that Sunday’s accident should put her into retirement.
“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Kildow said. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”
