US star Lindsey Vonn’s dream of winning a medal at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics ended in dramatic fashion on Sunday after she crashed out of the women’s downhill just 13 seconds into her run.
The 41-year-old had been trying to ski with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in her daring bid to win a medal in her favoured discipline at her fifth Olympics.
Vonn won the gold medal in the downhill and a bronze in the super-G at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 and added another bronze in the downhill at Pyeongchang in 2018.
AFP Sport chronicles Vonn’s Olympic performances:
The American had hung up her ski boots in 2019, but came out of retirement in 2024 thanks to a titanium implant in her right knee.
She staged a stunning comeback this season, including two World Cup downhill victories.
But just one week before the Milan-Cortina Games she suffered a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee competing in Crans Montana, Switzerland.
Vonn insisted her Olympic dream was “not over” and successfully completed two training runs on the Olimpia delle Tofane piste in Cortina, where she has won 12 times in World Cup races.
But on Sunday, skiing 13th, she came a cropper 13 seconds later with her screams of pain audible on TV coverage before she was airlifted off the piste.
Absent: retired
Vonn sat out the Beijing Olympics after announcing she would retire following the 2019 world championship when, at the age of 34, she bettered her own record for the oldest woman racer to win a medal by taking another bronze in the downhill.
That also saw her become the first female racer to receive medals at six different world championships.
Races: downhill (3); super-G (6=); combined (DNF)
Now 33, Vonn was one of global sport’s most marketable female figures. She claimed bronze in the downhill and a joint-sixth finish in the super-G.
“If you think about what’s happened over the last eight years and what I’ve been through to get here, I gave it all and to come away with a medal is a dream come true,” said Vonn, then swearing it was her last Olympics.
Absent: injured
Vonn suffered a dramatic crash during the fog-hit super-G race at the 2013 Schladming world championships.
She was leading but cartwheeled into the safety netting, leaving her with a torn anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament in her right knee, with a tibial plateau fracture.
She re-injured the knee on her return to action, which caused her to miss the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Races: downhill (1); super-G (3); slalom (DNF); giant slalom (DNF); combined (DNF)
A year on from double gold (downhill, super-G) at the Val d’Isere world championships, the stage was set for the American, by now married to fellow skier Thomas Vonn, to shine. And she didn’t disappoint.
Vonn claimed the USA’s first-ever women’s Olympic downhill gold in the Canadian resort of Whistler.
“I got what I came here to do, I got a gold medal,” Vonn said, also bagging a bronze in the super-G.
She had also led after the downhill of the combined, but skied out of the slalom section. There were similar ‘did not finishes’ in the slalom and giant slalom races.
Races: downhill (8); super-G (7); slalom (14); combined (DNF)
Vonn was second fastest in the opening downhill training run, but crashed heavily in the second and spent a night in hospital. She rebounded in time to race the downhill, eventually finishing eighth.
“I was okay in the warm-up,” she said, “but I have a lot of pain in my back. My left butt cheek doesn’t seem to work.”
Vonn went on to claim seventh in the super-G after finishing 14th in the slalom.
Races: slalom (did not finish/DNF); combined (6)
Vonn made her Olympic debut on home snow at the age of 17, finishing sixth in the combined. Vonn -- then skiing under her maiden name of Kildow – went on to her first World Cup race in December 2004.
Over the years, Vonn’s US teammate Mikaela Shiffrin, with 108 wins, has bettered Vonn’s World Cup tally of 84.
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