Lindsey Vonn is sharing the details behind her Winter Olympics injury.
The three-time Olympic medalist tore her ACL a few days into heading into the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. However, when she got to the games, she then suffered a tibial plateau fracture, fractured fibula, and broken ankle during this year's games, and is now speaking out in great detail about the injury and her recovery.
“My leg was broken. My skis were still on. My leg was torqued, and I couldn’t get my skis off. I couldn’t move, and I was yelling for help,” Vonn recalled to Vanity Fair, adding, “I just needed someone to take my skis off.”
To help ease her pain at the time, Vonn was given painkillers, but to no avail; she was still in distress.
“Halfway through, I started sweating. I was just in such extreme pain. I screamed at the top of my lungs: Get me out. It just wouldn’t dissipate. It wouldn’t let up. It’s seared into my brain.”
Her leg was swelling at this point, and in her exact case, she was suffering from compartment syndrome. The outlet noted that it is “where pressure mounts in the leg, restricting blood flow and causing widespread nerve damage.”
Vonn previously revealed that her condition was so bad that it was possible that she would have faced an amputation. The hospital staff, including Dr. Hackett, were able to save her leg.
“Dr. Hackett was on my left. There were a bunch of doctors and nurses around me,” Vonn remembers. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to save your leg. I got this. I’m scrubbing in.’”
The news of Vonn's crash was widespread but she told the outlet that she will not let fans let her be remembered by this crash and not her illustrious accomplishments.
“I don’t want people to hang on this crash and be remembered for that,” she told the magazine. “What I did before the Olympics has never been done before. I was number one in the standings. No one remembers that I was winning.”
She is the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the downhill, which she earned in 2010. That same year she also won bronze in the Super-G and in 2018 she won bronze again in the downhill.
