Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy– Lindsey Vonn suffered a “complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to properly repair” after her devastating crash on the Olympic slope, the skater said in a social media post late Monday.
Vonn posted on Instagram about her left leg injuries after falling in a race Sunday.
“Although yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets,” Vaughn said.
Nine days before Sunday’s accident, Vonn, 41, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee. It’s an injury that sidelines professional athletes for months, but ski racers sometimes compete this way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan-Cortina Games.
Spectators on social media wondered whether Vonn’s torn anterior cruciate ligament played a role in her crash near the top of the Olimpia delle Tofana, where she racked up a World Cup record 12 wins. Perhaps, on her good left knee, she wouldn’t have been able to cut through the gate and managed to avoid the collision.
“Yesterday, my Olympic dream did not end the way I dreamed it would,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t the end of a story book or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and worked hard to make it happen. Because in downhill ski racing, the difference between a strategic streak and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.
“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm got stuck inside the gate, spraining it and causing me to crash. My ACL and previous injuries had absolutely nothing to do with my crash.”
Vonn’s father said on Monday that the American star would no longer race if it had any influence on her decision.
“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more Lindsey Vonn ski races, as long as I have something to say about it.”
Lindsey Vonn of the United States crashes during the women’s downhill ski race at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Sunday, February 8, 2026.
AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin
When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she consulted with her team of doctors and coaches before deciding to go ahead with the race. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not verify the injury status of athletes.
“I firmly believe that this matter should be decided by the individual athlete,” FIS President Johan Eliach said on Monday in Bormio. “And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries in her body better than anyone. And if you look around here today with all the athletes, yesterday’s athletes, every athlete has a little injury of some kind.”
“It’s also important for people to understand that the accident I had yesterday was incredibly unlucky. It was one in a thousand,” Eliash added. “She got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air at the gate and started spinning. No one can recover from that, unless you do a 360 degree turn. … That’s something that’s part of ski racing. It’s a dangerous sport.”
The Italian hospital in Treviso, where Vonn was being treated, said late Sunday that she had undergone surgery to repair her broken left leg. The US Ski Team said only that Vonn “suffered an injury, but he is in stable condition and in safe hands with a team of American and Italian doctors.”
Pierre Dockery, the IOC’s sporting director, noted that Vonn was able to train and had experts advise her on her decision.
“So from that point of view, I don’t think we can say that she should have participated or she shouldn’t have. This was really her decision and her team’s decision to make,” he said. “I made the decision and unfortunately it led to injury, but I think that’s the way the decision is made for every athlete who participates in the downhill.”
Teammate Kelly Cashman also said Vonn’s ACL had nothing to do with her accident.
“That’s absolutely not true,” said Cashman, who was knocked unconscious in a serious crash five years ago. “People who don’t know ski racing don’t really understand what happened yesterday. She got her arm stuck on the gate, spraining it. She was going probably 70 miles an hour, and that sprains your body. This has nothing to do with her ACL, and nothing to do with her knee. I think a lot of people make fun of that, and a lot of people don’t (know) what’s going on.”
The hours following the plane crash were full of opinions, most of them speculative in nature. Like, should someone have intervened?
“It’s her choice,” said veteran Italian skater Federica Brignone. “If it’s your body, you decide what to do, whether to race or not. It’s not up to other people. It’s just you.”
Brignone suffered multiple fractures of the tibial plateau and fibula in her left leg during a crash in April and returned to compete in the Olympic downhill – where she finished 10th.
American downhiller Kyle Nigomir echoed that thought.
“Lindsey is a grown woman, the best speed skater to ever play the sport,” Nigomeier said. “If she makes her decision, I think she should definitely be allowed to take that risk.” “She’s obviously good enough to be able to pull it off. Just because it didn’t work out yesterday doesn’t mean it definitely wasn’t likely that she could crush it and have a perfect round.”
You can read it in full Instagram share here.
Lindsey Vonn’s father told the AP that he wants her to retire after her Olympic crash
Lindsey Vonn’s father said Monday that the American star would no longer race if it had any influence on her decision and that she would not return to the Winter Olympics after breaking her leg in a downhill slide over the weekend.
“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more Lindsey Vonn ski races, as long as I have something to say about it.”
Kildo and the rest of Vonn’s family — a brother and two sisters as well — were with Vonn as she was treated at a hospital in Treviso after she fell and was evacuated by helicopter from the course in Cortina on Sunday.
The hospital late Sunday issued a statement saying Vonn had undergone surgery on her left leg, and the U.S. Ski Team said she was in stable condition. There have been no further updates since then.
Kildow declined to comment on the details of Vonn’s injuries, but spoke about her emotional state.
“She’s a very strong person,” Kildow said. “She knows the physical pain and she understands the circumstances she finds herself in. She’s able to handle it. Better than I expected. She’s a very, very strong person. And so I think she’s handling it well.”
Kildo, a former ski racer who taught his daughter to race, said he slept in his daughter’s hospital room all night.
“She has someone with her — or multiple people with her — at all times,” Kildow said. “We’ll have people here as long as she’s here.”
Kildo and the rest of the Vaughn family watched the accident from the finish area along with all the other spectators.
“First, the shock and horror of the whole thing, to see an incident like that,” Kildow said of what he felt as he watched the scene. “It can be dramatic and shocking. You’re just terrified of what these kinds of effects have.”
He added: “You may be subjected to emotional trauma.” “Because it’s hard to accept what happened. But she’s being well taken care of. … The US Olympic Committee and the US Ski Team have a top-notch doctor with her and she’s receiving very good care here in Italy.”
Vonn raced downhill despite tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee nine days earlier in another accident.
“What happened to her had nothing to do with the anterior cruciate ligament problem in her left leg. Nothing,” Kildow said. “She has demonstrated that she is able to function at a very high level with her two downhill training runs. … High-level doctors have cleared her to ski.”
Kildow said the accident was less a result of Vonn’s knee injury than the way she pushed the limits of her racing line to the point where she clipped the gate early in her run and spun out of control.
“There are times sometimes in any race, but especially downhill, where you have to slow down a little bit,” he said. “You can give yourself a little more room on the line so you don’t put yourself in a questionable position.”
Vonn, who holds the record for 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, returned to the track last season after nearly six years of retirement and following a partial titanium replacement surgery on her right knee. She has won twice on the downhill and finished on the podium in seven of the eight World Cup races she has finished this season – and finished fourth in the other.
“She’s won 84 World Cup races. Not a lot of people do that,” Kildow said, referring to Vonn’s total victories, which place her second on the women’s all-time list behind teammate Mikaela Shiffrin’s 108 victories.
Kildow added: “There is a very big difference between sprint racing, especially downhill racing, and slalom racing.”
Kildow said Vonn will not return to the Olympics to cheer on his teammates or for anything else.
“No, she’s not in that position,” he said. “You’ll be home in time.”
Graham reported from Bormio. AP Sports Writers Will Graves in Treviso and Daniela Matar in Milan contributed to this report.
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