‘I may be crazy enough to try one more time’: Lindsey Vonn isn’t ruling out a comeback after eight surgeries and two months in a wheelchair

According to the Olympics website, Vonn is named on the 2026-27 U.S. alpine skiing team, pending her recovery following her injury in February during the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, where she crashed in the women’s downhill and had to be airlifted out. The injury broke her leg, required eight surgeries and left her in a wheelchair for nearly two months. If she returns, it would be after more than a dozen career injuries, on a body she admits is “a little bit older.”

“I fell and I immediately knew that my leg was broken as an extreme amount of pain. And I would say this injury, like this crash, has been the hardest of my life,” she said.

Vonn, a four-time World Cup title American alpine ski race winner and the first American woman to win the Olympic gold medal for downhill skiing, spoke at a panel for Zeta Live 2026, hosted by Zeta Global where she recounted her experience recovering from her crash—and what that means for her in the future.

“This Olympic run was a special and unique situation,” Vonn said, “So from a sporting perspective, I mean, there is still a small chance that I may be crazy enough to try one more time.”

Coming back from an injury is nothing new for Vonn. After all, she’s dealt with injuries before: Since 2007, Vonn has suffered 14 different injuries—from MCL sprains, fractured bones, torn ACLs and more. The difference now, however, is that she’s 41—making her the oldest member of the U.S. alpine skiing team by a wide margin.

“For me, it was like hanging on to what could have been,” she said. “That was something that, with both injuries, I don’t deal with—because normally, I have plenty of time. I do my rehab. I come back and I win again, and I’m always fine. But this time, you know, I’m a little bit older.”

“But this injury, it took me, I would say, four months to get to the other side,” she continued. “Normally, I have surgery, it’s shaped for a couple days, and then I’m like, okay, I’m making progress. And this one, I just never felt like I was making progress. So, staying tough and just knowing that step by step I’m going to get there is the only way I can mentally deal with that kind of pain.”

Vonn said her injury could have been career ending shortly after her broken leg in February—revealing her left leg may have needed to be amputated on an Instagram post. But even among the injuries, she has racked up a resume that few can stand next to: 84 world cup wins, four world cup titles, three Olympic medals and eight world championship medals.

“I mean, you know, ski racing is a dangerous sport, obviously, and it’s kind of part of the job,” she said.

But that hasn’t come with outside pleas for retirement—Vonn’s father, Alan Kildow, told the Associated Press in February “this is the end of her career.”

“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Kildow said. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”

But passion for the sport is what drew her in in the first place. Her broken leg at the Olympics was just the latest hurdle for her to overcome: “My scars are horrible, and I had eight surgeries.” Vonn recounted being in “a wheelchair for almost two months” with an “extended and extreme amount of pain.”

“I think my injuries always gave me a different perspective, and actually were something that motivated me to want to work harder and to come back stronger,” Vonn continued. “Because I think you know when you have something you love and it’s taken away, you realize how much you love it.”

Recovering from an ACL tear is hard, staying away from your sport is hard, but at the end of the day, this is what she loves to do, she said.

“I mean staying present is hard,” Vonn explained. “I think though, like I’m someone that looks at the long-term goal. I’ve done that my whole life since I was nine years old. I wanted to be in the Olympics, and that was a 10-year plan that I made with my father at nine years old.”