Lindsey Vonn (41 years old) spoke in Vanity Fair about what happened in Italy, about what the days after the injury were like, but also about his future.
Lindsey Vonn has been living through moments of horror for the past month and a half, and now she has gone into detail about how she got through the terrifying moments of the injury she suffered on February 8, when, after 13 seconds of downhill, she hooked a pole on a gate and was launched off the slope, where her screams sent shockwaves around the world.
Vonn, who appears on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, revealed that she has a recurring dream: she is on the slope where she was injured and where she has won 12 times in her career, and she goes down without a problem, even wins. But this is just a dream, Lindsey's reality is different.
One where he has to recover from destroying his tibia, fibula and ankle, after many days in hospital, being in real danger of losing his left leg.
The Invincible Lindsey Vonn
In her first interview since Milano-Cortina, America's all-star skier, now in intensive rehab after nearly losing her leg in a crash of Olympic proportions, reflects on her epic career—and whether she will return to the mountain:… pic.twitter.com/eGrGhOfKrF
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) March 26, 2026
The American skier reiterated that her terrible injury was a mistake she made on the course, not a torn cruciate ligament in her knee, an injury she suffered nine days before the Olympics. “It was a very, very small error. We are talking about a few centimeters. He paid a very high price”, a said Aksel Lund Svindal, her coach, a former great skier.
Lindsey Vonn posted the picture of the moment that caused the terrible fall. Photo: Facebook
In addition to the accident, the American had another problem: her skis did not come off. “The skis were still on. My leg was twisted and I couldn't take off my skis. I couldn't move and was screaming for help. I just needed someone to take my skis off,” Vonn recounted.
Lindsey Vonn ended up first in a tent, then at the hospital
A helicopter transported her from the slope under the eyes of the whole world. He took her to a tent at the side of the competition slope, where Tom Hackett, the head physician for the US Ski and Snowboard Team, was waiting for her. The scene was total chaos. Medical personnel were trying to remove Vonn's helmet, goggles, suit and booties. She screamed in pain. The fans invaded the tent. “It was a terrible situation,” Hackett recounted. He immobilized her leg and put her back in the helicopter to take her to the official clinic in Cortina.
Lindsay Vonn, terrible injury
When they arrived, Hackett had to be both doctor and security guard. “The paparazzi stormed the place, saying they were friends and part of her PR team,” he recounted.
At the clinic, they gave Vonn painkillers and gave her a CT scan. The effect of the drugs did not last long. “Halfway through the procedure, I started sweating. I was in excruciating pain. I screamed at the top of my lungs, 'Get me out of here!'” Vonn recalled.
The paparazzi, present everywhere after Lindsey Vonn
A CT scan revealed that Vonn had a severe fracture in her left leg that required surgical stabilization. After several phone calls, Hackett made the decision to transfer her to a hospital in Treviso, Italy. They arrived by helicopter 40 minutes later, but had trouble landing. The paparazzi had invaded the heliport.
“Somehow they found out that's where we were going. Which was extraordinary. We hadn't told anyone,” said the doctor.
The hospital quickly mobilized a team of 20 doctors and nurses to enter the operating room. The first surgery went great, Hackett says. After that, they moved Vonn to Intensive Care. A few hours passed. Vonn fell asleep. It was Sunday evening. Most of the team of doctors and nurses had gone home.
But then Vonn woke up. He started screaming again, even more terrifying than before. Her leg had started to swell and wouldn't stop. “She was getting worse and she was unresponsive to massive amounts of fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, I mean every narcotic you can imagine,” he said.
Vonn suffered from compartment syndrome, a dangerous condition in which pressure builds up in the leg, restricting blood flow and causing extensive nerve damage.
“I'm sure you've seen sausages on the grill. They get bigger and bigger. Then all of a sudden they explode. They break. That's what happens with compartment syndrome,” Hackett said. “There was a very good chance that she would completely lose the functionality of her leg, if not the leg itself. At best, in situations like this, you might save your leg, but it will be useless.”
He called the doctors he had operated with and within hours he was back in surgery.
Lindsey Vonn: “It took all my strength not to go crazy”
Hackett performed a fasciotomy: a limb-saving surgery that involves severing the connective tissue around the muscles to relieve dangerously high pressure. Vonn woke up in the intensive care unit with suction pumps attached to her legs, removing all of her excess blood.
A third surgery followed to close some of the incisions from the second, but not everything could be sutured. So, after a few days, she underwent her fourth operation. “It basically came down to trying to save his skin and muscle,” says Hackett.
Lindsey Vonn // PHOTO: Instagram
Lindsey Vonn is very grateful to the doctors and nurses in Treviso, but is still haunted by her stay there. One was to feel constant and excruciating pain, even under the effect of an extreme dose of medicine. Added to this was the reality of life in an intensive care unit: nurses would wake her every three hours, speaking in a language she did not understand.
He shared the room with other patients, separated only by a thin curtain, as he went through the experience of a near amputation of his leg. The lights stayed on until 11pm and the exit sign stayed on all night. “It took all my strength not to go crazy,” she says.
Lindsey Vonn returned to the US on a special plane
After the fourth surgery, Vonn's leg was sutured, Hackett gave her the green light to return to Vail, Colorado, on a transatlantic medical plane. “I couldn't move out of bed, let alone get on a regular plane. I still had a catheter,” Vonn said.
On Feb. 20, Hackett underwent a six-hour operation at the renowned Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado, to actually repair the fracture: “The definitive, major surgery,” as he calls it. Finally, on March 1, almost a month after her Cortina accident, she returned home to Park City, Utah.
Numerous letters have arrived from David Beckham, Jannik Sinner, Tom Brady and even Prince William “The way you wrote about entering the starting gate with courage and no regrets speaks volumes for your resilience,” the royal wrote. But the most significant was Diane Sawyer's: “You can't have courage and comfort at the same time.”
Recovery now takes up most of Vonn's day. She says she is finally off pain medication, but admitted she feels exhausted.
Lindsey Vonn in recovery / photo: instagram @lindseyvonn
It was hard for Vonn to think about giving up on her calling, a feeling that most great athletes face when they must one day leave their job. “It's the feeling that no one cares,” she says. “That the world keeps turning whether you're there or not.”
Asked if she's considering a return to skiing, Vonn said: “I don't like closing the door on anything because you never know what's going to happen. I have no idea what my life will look like in two, three or four years. I could have two kids by then. I could be childless and want to compete again. I could live in Europe. I could do anything.”
He then added: “It's hard to say with this injury. It's so bad. I really feel like it was a horrible last race to end my career with. I only lasted 13 seconds. But it was a really good 13 seconds.”
“Alpine skiing is not like basketball”
Lindsey Vonn also spoke about the criticism she received for not letting someone else compete in her place. “Everybody was saying it was reckless and I took someone else's place and all that shit. I'm not crazy. I know what I can do and what I can't do,” said Lindsey Vonn.
Her physiotherapist, Lindsay Winninger, believes these criticisms have come from a general lack of understanding of elite athletes' bodies and how they manage injuries. “Lindsey was in peak physical condition. She was in top form going into the Olympics. When you tear your ACL, it's not like you lose all your strength, power, and cardiovascular endurance overnight. Then there are the realities of downhill skiing: It's not a sport like basketball, where you're constantly spinning and jumping. She just needed to execute a few clean turns“.
Vonn adds: “I don't want people to focus on this accident and be remembered for it. What I did before the Olympics has never been done before. I was number one in the downhill. No one remembers that,” emphasized the American.
