Legendary skier Lindsey Vonn is not giving up on her dream of competing in the Milan-Cortina Winter Games despite a crash during a race Friday, telling her social media followers, “if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback.”
It’s the kind of determination Vonn is bringing to the big role she’s playing in Utah’s next Winter Games, in 2034.
“I think we hit the jackpot in so many ways with Lindsey,” said longtime friend Fraser Bullock, president and executive chair of the Organizing Committee for the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
“Her post reflects her incredible indomitable spirit,” Bullock said.
He said his “heart stopped for a moment” when he learned of her fall during a World Cup downhill race in Crans Montana, Switzerland, and reached out to Vonn via text, sending “my prayers and my best to her.”
Vonn’s crash “is very scary. Then being airlifted out deepens the concern. I hope she is OK,” Bullock said, pledging that Utah’s Olympic organizers “will do what would show our best support” as they learn more.
In an Instagram post, Vonn said she injured her left knee and is “discussing the situation with my doctors and team and will continue to undergo further exams. This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics… but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback. My Olympic dream is not over.”
Like the rest of the world, Bullock was surprised by Vonn’s comeback after a 2024 partial right knee replacement. Vonn, now 41, had stepped away from ski racing five years earlier due to injuries that left her unable to walk without pain.
That surgery, which left her with what The Athletic called “a block of titanium” in her right knee, was so successful that Vonn quickly realized her skiing career didn’t need to be over and set her sights on competing in a fifth Olympics.
“We thought she was retired when we asked her first of all to join the bid board and now the organizing committee board. Who would have thought that she would be the favorite in the downhill or potentially in the Super G? It’s just mind-blowing, so exciting,” Bullock said before the crash.
Vonn’s ties to Utah’s Olympics, past and present
But Vonn is more than just one of the biggest stars of Team USA in Milan-Cortina. She’s also among the six members of the Utah Games’ executive committee, empowered to make decisions about the state’s next Winter Games.
“The fact that she’s also a representative for us is fantastic,” Bullock said. “Because she works with us when she’s not training, this year she hasn’t made a lot of meetings and we understand why. But her knowledge, her visibility, her input, have been invaluable.”
At the International Olympic Committee meeting in Paris in July 2024, Vonn helped make the successful pitch for the 2034 Winter Games to go to Utah then jumped for joy along with Bullock and other bid leaders, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall.
Two years earlier, Vonn was also part of the Utah bid team that traveled to the IOC’s headquarters in Switzerland for pivotal meetings about their hopes of hosting again as soon as 2030.
There, then-IOC President Thomas Bach raised concerns about the U.S.-led diplomatic boycott months earlier of Beijing’s 2022 Winter Games, saying the United States should have been more supportive of China.
Vonn, who met privately with Bach on behalf of the bid, told reporters that the German IOC leader and other officials ended up being “very receptive and very positive” about Utah getting a second Winter Games.
She also noted then that for her, it “would be such a full circle moment” for the Winter Games to return to Utah, where she made her Olympic debut as the youngest member of the Alpine ski team, just 17 years old.
“It was such a special moment,” she’s told NBC Sports about the response from the 30,000 spectators to her downhill run at Snowbasin. “I’ve been to quite a few Olympics and I think that was the loudest I’ve ever heard a crowd crossing the finish line in my career.”
Her ‘transformational’ idea for the 2034 Games
Bullock credits Vonn with having “really changed the face of an element of our Games, in that we have the Athletes Families Initiative. That’s going to be huge for our Games. That’s going to say a lot for our state. And where did it come from? It came from Lindsey.”
The initiative, announced nearly three years ago, calls for the organizing committee to assist the families of 2034 athletes with housing, transportation, tickets and other needs so they can be at the Games to cheer on their loved ones.
A first of its kind “village” for the families of athletes is planned at the University of Utah, near where the world’s athletes will be housed once again. Vonn has told the Deseret News her own extended family stayed with a second cousin during the 2002 Games.
“It was the only Olympics that every single member of my family was in attendance,” she said.
Her late mother, permanently disabled after having a stroke giving birth to Vonn, was at all four of the Winter Games where her daughter competed, even though it was often difficult to get to remote mountain venues.
Seeing her mother’s struggles over the years inspired Vonn.
“I want to make that experience better for other families than it was for my family,” she said.
Bullock said that’s always been an issue for Vonn. Back in 2021, he and another key bid committee leader, four-time Olympic speedskater Catherine Raney Norman, were talking about adding more athletes to their board.
“Lindsey’s name rose to the top,” Bullock said. “In our first interaction with her, via Zoom, I asked her how we could make the experience better for the athletes at our Games. She immediately said, ‘Take care of their families.’”
Bullock’s reaction? “Wow,” he recalled thinking. “This is big and transformational.”
Being inspired and an inspiration
Vonn’s decision to come out of retirement last season led to a tearful victory in March 2025 that made her the oldest woman to medal in a skiing World Cup. This season, the wins have kept coming. So have the questions about her age.
At last fall’s Team USA media summit in New York City, Vonn acknowledged “women don’t normally compete at my age. I think that needs to change. I think the perception of women competing older needs to change.”
She said she expected “people would probably freak out,” and they did, about her goal of competing in one last Olympics, despite male athletes like Tom Brady and LeBron James playing pro sports in their 40s.
“Even though what people said about me and the comeback hurt, it didn’t stop me from believing in my ability. I knew that I could succeed,” Vonn said. “I know it sounds corny. ... I believe that I’m meant to be in this position. I believe my hard work will pay off.”
U.S. skier Lauren Macuga of Park City, sidelined this season after injuring her knee during a training run, said she and her teammates have picked up plenty of useful tips from Vonn. Macuga, now 23, first qualified for the U.S. ski team at 16.
“It was so cool” having Vonn back on the team, Macuga said in an interview for “Last Chair: The Ski Utah Podcast” hosted by Tom Kelly, communications lead for the Utah organizing committee and a longtime skiing spokesman.
When Vonn came back, Macuga said it was like “trying to be a high class athlete and then you have someone that’s done it. ... Getting to watch Lindsey and learn, just, it’s like random things of how to be a better athlete.”
She remembers watching the Super Bowl TV commercial promoting NBC’s coverage of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, that featured video of Vonn rehabbing from a serious injury set to Alicia Keys’ iconic anthem, “Girl on Fire.”
“From that moment on, I was like, oh my gosh, she’s the coolest person ever. I just loved watching her,” said Macuga, who went on to make the team the year Vonn retired. “I was like, are you kidding me. ... I was this close to being on a team with her. Crazy enough, she came back.”
It was U.S. skier Picabo Street, one of the biggest names from Utah’s 2002 Olympics, who filled that role for Vonn. Street, making her NBC Olympics debut in Italy as the women’s hill reporter, will help cover Vonn’s races in Cortina.
“Picabo Street was my idol growing up — I met her at an autograph signing when I was 9 years old, and it changed my life. I went home that night and told my dad I wanted to be in the Olympics, and we made a plan," Vonn told Entertainment Weekly in 2022.
“I started the Lindsey Vonn Foundation based on that experience with Picabo — having her empower me in such a short period of time is what I wanted to give back to others,” Vonn said. “Having that type of impact is the best thing I’ve done in my career.”
She said she started her Lindsey Vonn Foundation to support underserved girls with sports-based scholarships and other programs based on her experience with Street. “Having her empower me in such a short period of time is what I wanted to give back to others,” Vonn said.
What Gov. Cox says about Vonn
Utah’s governor offered high praise for Vonn.
“We’re friends. I’m so proud of Lindsey and what she’s accomplishing. It’s really incredible and historic. I can’t wait to see her success,” Cox said, calling her “the perfect ambassador” to Utah’s Winter Games.
“She’s such an icon, so well known. And even without the comeback, is still one of the most recognized athletes in the world and maybe the most recognized athletes when it comes to winter sports right now in the United States and across the globe,” he said.
Her return to the Olympics, the governor said, “only adds to the legend and again, speaks to Utah. This is our comeback in 2034 so I think the parallels are certainly there. We’re lucky to have her on Team Utah.”