Despite spending weeks in the hospital and almost losing her leg, Lindsey Vonn hasn’t officially retired from skiing.
Vonn opened up about the moments and weeks after her crash at the 2026 Olympics in Vanity Fair’s cover story Thursday from her Park City, Utah, home.
“I was No. 1 in the world, and potentially on my way to an Olympic medal,” Vonn said. “Now I’m in a wheelchair.”
Here are three takeaways from Vonn’s Vanity Fair interview, including what she said about the future of her skiing career.
What happened after Lindsey Vonn’s crash
Thirteen seconds into Vonn’s run in the women’s downhill at the Olympics, Vonn’s arm got caught on one of the gates, causing her to crash.
“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 told Vanity Fair. “I just needed someone to take my skis off.”
Vonn was airlifted off the mountain to a tent near the course, where Tom Hackett, the head physician for Team USA Ski and Snowboard, splinted her leg and returned her to the helicopter, which took her to Cortina’s official Olympic clinic.
There, Hackett tended to Vonn and kept paparazzi away.
Vonn received painkillers at the clinic before her CT scan, but they quickly wore off.
“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,” Vonn said.
Under Hackett’s orders, Vonn was transferred to a hospital in Treviso, Italy, via helicopter after the CT scan showed the fracture in her left leg needed surgical stabilization.
The helicopter “had trouble landing” because “paparazzi had swarmed the helipad,” according to Vanity Fair.
“It had somehow leaked that that’s where we were going,” Hackett said. “Which was extraordinary. I didn’t tell anybody.”
Lindsey Vonn’s surgeries and rehab
After her first surgery in Treviso, doctors moved Vonn to the ICU, where she fell asleep but woke up in severe pain hours later as her leg swelled and wouldn’t stop.
Hackett said Vonn wasn’t “responding to monster amounts of fentanyl, morphine, oxycodone, like every narcotic you can imagine.”
That’s when Hackett realized Vonn had compartment syndrome, which could have resulted in the amputation of Vonn’s leg if Hackett hadn’t performed surgery, as the Deseret News previously reported.
“I’m sure you’ve seen hot dogs or brats on a grill. They get more and more swollen. Then all of a sudden, they burst. They crack. That’s basically what happens with compartment syndrome,” Hackett said. “There was a very significant chance that she was going to lose all function of her leg, if not the leg itself. Best-case scenario in those situations is, you might keep your leg, but it’s going to be useless.”
Vonn underwent four surgeries in Italy and another six-hour surgery in Vail, Colorado, where Hackett rebuilt Vonn’s knee. She had to fly to Colorado on a trans-Atlantic medevac.
“I couldn’t move out of my bed, let alone somehow manage to get on (a regular) airplane,” Vonn said. “I still had a catheter.”
Now, back in Utah, Vonn’s daily routine revolves around recovering.
She spends two hours every day doing physical therapy at home and spends another two hours in a hyperbaric chamber, according to Vanity Fair. Afterward, she returns to work out in her home gym.
Will Lindsey Vonn ski again?
Vonn retired from skiing in 2019. Five years later, she came out of retirement.
In her second season back, the 41-year-old Vonn had podiumed in seven of her eight races (she finished fourth in the eighth race) going into the 2026 Olympics.
“I don’t want people to hang on this crash and be remembered for that,” Vonn says. “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.”
Vonn is no stranger to defying the odds, and when Vanity Fair asked if she’d return to the sport, she didn’t rule out the possibility.
“I don’t like to close the door on anything, because you just never know what’s going to happen,” Vonn said. “I have no idea what my life will be like in two years or three years or four years. I could have two kids by then. I could have no kids and want to race again. I could live in Europe. I could be doing anything.”
She added that “it’s hard to tell with this injury,” and she isn’t happy with the idea of her crash at the Olympics being the final run of her career.
“I really feel like that was a horrible last run to end my career on,” she said. “I only made it 13 seconds. But they were a really good 13 seconds.”