Lindsey Vonn not ready to decide if she’ll ski again after Olympics crash

Lindsey Vonn is still recovering physically and emotionally from her frightening crash at the Winter Olympics. For now, the tough decisions about the future can wait.

The American ski racer has undergone eight surgeries after suffering a complex left leg fracture – one that nearly led to a leg amputation – in the women’s downhill skiing race on February 8 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. She needs at least one more to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in that same knee.

So if the 41-year-old races again — and she’s not ready to make that decision — a return is at least a year and a half away, Vonn told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday.

“I just don’t want to jump to any conclusions or even speculate on what I might do,” Vonn said. “I may retire. I may never race again, and that would be completely fine. But I’m not in a position emotionally to make that decision at this point.”

Vonn thinks she would have returned to retirement had she been able to complete a comeback season that rivalled one of the best of her career. She ended a six-year absence from the sport largely to race at Cortina, one of her favorite courses, and the venue for the Milan Cortina Games.

The winner of three Olympic medals, including a downhill gold in 2010, Vonn crashed just 13 seconds into the race and suffered a complex tibia fracture, shocking a star-studded crowd and ending a season in which she led the World Cup downhill standings and had not finished worse than fourth in any race.

She has returned from an assortment of injuries before – she has a titanium implant in her right knee – but this one was different. The pain was different. The eight surgeries are just one shy of the total she had for all the others combined.

“It’s a much different injury in that way, again, like the severity of the injury and understanding that I could have lost my leg and how bad things were,” Vonn said. “I can deal with a lot of pain, but this was so extreme. It’s not even been in the universe of pain with this injury as what I’ve had before.”

Vonn is making progress in and out of the gym, though not as quickly as she would like. She has moved beyond a wheelchair and now is on crutches – she is weary of both – and next week will be able to begin walking short distances.

‘Tell me I can’t, and I’ll prove you wrong’

Vonn is able to travel again, making a trip to New York this week to discuss her support for the biopharmaceutical company Invivyd’s “Antibodies for Any Body” educational campaign. She also has an upcoming vacation planned.

Beyond that, the future is hard to see.

Vonn said she hasn’t spoken to her doctor about what a return to skiing would look like, saying they both prefer to focus on this phase of her recovery.

“Regardless, nothing would really happen until ’27-28 because I still have one more surgery left to take out the metal and to replace my ACL. That still needs to happen,” Vonn said. “Once I get my ACL fixed, then that’s another six months, so I have at least I would say a year and a half ahead of me before I could really be back to 100 percent, even just training in the gym.”