Lindsey Vonn is sharing an update on an injury she encountered over the weekend at the 2026 Winter Olympics — and it seems like she’s got a long recovery ahead of her.
The 41-year-old took to Instagram on Monday to share a lengthy post about her Olympic journey coming to an end. Vonn was competing this year on a rebuilt right knee and a badly injured left knee. on Sunday, Feb. 8, she suffered a left tibia fracture in a crash during the women’s downhill event in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy and was airlifted from the course. Her time in the competition also marks her return to ski racing following nearly six years of retirement.
“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life,” she wrote. “I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches. I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”
She continued to note what’s next for her after sustaining the injury, “Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly.”
Vonn explained that while the Olympics didn’t end the way she hoped, “despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets.”
“I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport,” she added. “And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is also the beauty of life; we can try. I tried. I dreamt. I jumped.”
Vonn has competed in five Olympic Games and is a three-time Olympic medalist. She won gold in 2010.
