Lindsey Vonn is speaking publicly again, and what she has to say about the 13 seconds that almost ended her life is worth reading in full.
Vonn sat down with Craig Melvin for Today’s Glass Half Full podcast, published April 6, opening up about her recovery, the Olympic crash that nearly cost her her leg, and whether she will ever ski competitively again.
The interview follows her Vanity Fair cover story, her first major interview since the accident in which she described recurring dreams of the race she never got to finish, and made clear she is not ready to call it a career.
“I don’t like to close the door on anything, because you just never know what’s going to happen,” Vonn told Vanity Fair. “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 also addressed the persistent public pressure to announce her retirement directly:
“No, I’m not ready to discuss my future in skiing. My focus has been on recovering from my injury and getting back to normal life. I was already retired for 6 years and have an amazing life outside of skiing. It was incredible to be number one in the world again at 41 years old and set new records in my sport, but at my age, I’m the only one that will decide my future. I don’t need anyone’s permission to do what makes me happy.”
What Happened On February 8th?
Thirteen seconds. That is how long Vonn’s Olympic downhill run lasted before everything went wrong.
She was the tenth skier to drop from the start gate in the women’s downhill at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, racing on the Olimpia delle Tofane course in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
She had already survived one serious crash in the lead-up, nine days before the Olympic race, at a World Cup event in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, she tore her ACL and was airlifted from that course.
Critics demanded she withdraw and give her spot to another American. She refused. “Everyone said it was reckless and I was taking a spot from somebody else and all this nonsense,” she told Vanity Fair. “I’m not crazy. I know what I can do and what I can’t do.”
On race day, 13 seconds into her run, her right arm caught one of the gates on a right-hand turn. It spun her into the air. She bounced down the slope. Her left leg was broken.
Her skis were still on, torquing the leg at an angle she could not correct. She was screaming for help. “I just needed someone to take my skis off,” she told Vanity Fair.
She was evacuated by helicopter to an official Olympic clinic, where she received a CT scan that confirmed a complex tibia fracture requiring surgical stabilization.
Then came the next crisis. As her leg swelled overnight in the ICU, the pain became uncontrollable. Team USA physician Dr. Tom Hackett, who had been functioning simultaneously as her doctor and her security guard, physically blocking paparazzi who had swarmed the clinic claiming to be friends and PR staff, recognized what was happening. Vonn had developed compartment syndrome.
Hackett described it to Vanity Fair:
“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. 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.”
Hackett performed emergency surgery to relieve the pressure. When Vonn was stable enough, she was transferred by helicopter to a hospital in Treviso, Italy, the helicopter had trouble landing because paparazzi had leaked the destination and swarmed the helipad.
She eventually underwent a six-hour reconstructive procedure at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado, described by Hackett as the “definitive, big-dog surgery.”
Four total operations. She returned home to Park City, Utah, on March 1, nearly a month after the crash.
Among those who came to see her in the hospital was Mariska Hargitay. Law and Order: SVU has been part of her recovery at home.
Life After The Crash
Vonn does not want the crash to be the story, and the numbers support her argument that it should not be.
She retired from skiing in 2019 at age 33, her body finally overtaken by the accumulated damage of a career defined by speed and impact, multiple ACL and MCL repairs, surgeries, chronic knee pain that left her unable to fully bend or straighten her right leg by the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
In retirement she tried car racing, rodeo roping, and wrote a book. In August 2022, her mother Linda died after a yearlong battle with ALS, a loss that sharpened Vonn’s perspective on time and what she wanted to do with it.
“My mother in general, her attitude has always inspired my comebacks,” Vonn said. “Her passing makes me realize even more that life is short. I’m given this opportunity and I can’t take that for granted.”
In 2024, at age 40, she received a partial knee replacement. She returned to competition. Her comeback was rough at first, as any return from nearly six years away would be. Then it wasn’t.
She won the downhill at St. Moritz in December 2025. She was number one in the women’s downhill World Cup standings going into the Olympics, the best skier in the world at 41, in the discipline where she had always been the best skier in the world.
In her eight World Cup races of the comeback season, she podiumed in seven of them.
“What I did before the Olympics has never been done before,” she told Vanity Fair. “I was number one in the standings. No one remembers that I was winning.”
Her coach for the comeback was Aksel Lund Svindal, the two-time Olympic champion from Norway who retired the same month Vonn did in 2019, then came back to help her do something neither of them thought possible again.
Who Is Lindsey Vonn?
Lindsey Caroline Vonn was born October 18, 1984, in Burnsville, Minnesota. She made her World Cup debut in 2000 at age 16.
She went on to win 84 World Cup races across her career, 20 World Cup globe titles, three Olympic medals spanning five Winter Games, and eight world championship medals.
She holds the record for the most downhill wins by any skier in history, male or female. She is the only American woman to win Olympic downhill gold, which she did in Vancouver in 2010 in one of the most memorable performances in Winter Olympics history.
When she first retired in 2019, she had more World Cup wins, 82 at that point, than any woman in history and the second most ever, behind Ingemar Stenmark’s 86. Mikaela Shiffrin has since surpassed both.
What She Said About The Dream
Vonn told Vanity Fair she has a recurring dream. She is back on the Olimpia delle Tofane course at the 2026 Olympics. She races clean. She crosses the finish line triumphant. Then she wakes up.
“It’s hard to tell with this injury. It’s so messed up. I really feel like that was a horrible last run to end my career on. I only made it 13 seconds. But they were a really good 13 seconds.”
As of April 2026, Vonn is doing five-minute cycling sessions as part of her physical therapy, one day at a time, she posted on Instagram, making progress.
Her father Alan Kildow has publicly called for her to retire, saying there will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn as long as he has anything to say about it.
Vonn’s response, posted on social media, addressed a fan who said she should put her feet up and be done:
“Think you’re mistaking ego for joy. I’ve said it my whole life: I love skiing. I’ll put my feet up when I’m good and ready, thank you.”
