By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Sports Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Lindsey Vonn is still recovering physically and emotionally from her frightening crash at the Winter Olympics. For now, the tough decisions about the future can wait.
She has undergone eight surgeries after suffering a complex left leg fracture — one that nearly led to a leg amputation — in the women’s downhill skiing race on Feb. 8. She needs at least one more to repair a torn ACL in that same knee.
So if the 41-year-old races again — and she’s not ready to make that decision — a return is at least a year and a half away, Vonn told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.
“I just don’t want to jump to any conclusions or even speculate on what I might do,” Vonn said. “I may retire. I may never race again and that would be completely fine, but I’m not in a position emotionally to make that decision at this point.”
A return to retirement was an option after a comeback season
Vonn thinks she would have returned to retirement had she been able to complete a comeback season that rivaled one of the best of her career. She ended a six-year absence from the sport largely to race at Cortina, Italy, one of her favorite courses, and the venue for the Milan Cortina Games.
The winner of three Olympic medals, including a downhill gold in 2010, crashed just 13 seconds into the race and suffered a complex tibia fracture, shocking a star-studded crowd and ending a season in which she led the World Cup downhill standings and hadn’t finished worse than fourth in any race.
She’s returned from an assortment of injuries before — she has a titanium implant in her right knee — but this one was different. The pain was different. The eight surgeries are just one shy of the total she had for all the others combined.
“It’s a much different injury in that way, again, like the severity of the injury and understanding that I could have lost my leg and how bad things were,” Vonn said. “I can deal with a lot of pain, but this was so extreme. It’s not even been in the universe of pain with this injury as what I’ve had before.”
Vonn is making progress in and out of the gym, though not as quickly as she would like. She has moved beyond a wheelchair and now is on crutches — she is weary of both — and next week will be able to begin walking short distances.
‘Tell me I can’t and I’ll prove you wrong’
She is able to travel again, making a trip to New York this week to discuss her support for the biopharmaceutical company Invivyd’s “Antibodies for Any Body” campaign, and she has an upcoming vacation planned.
Beyond that, the future is hard to see.
Vonn said she hasn’t spoken to her doctor about what a return to skiing would look like, saying they both prefer to focus on this phase of her recovery.
“Regardless, nothing would really happen until ’27-28 because I still have one more surgery left to take out the metal and to replace my ACL. That still needs to happen,” Vonn said. “Once I get my ACL fixed, then that’s another six months, so I have at least I would say a year and a half ahead of me before I could really be back to 100%, even just training in the gym.”
Vonn knows there could be risks in a return, and family members don’t want her to take them. It was only a day after her crash, when she was still in the hospital, that her father said her career would be over if it were up to him. Said Vonn: “He means the best. He forgot the cardinal rule with me is that if you don’t want me to do something, you shouldn’t tell me I can’t. Tell me I can’t and I’ll prove you wrong.”
A risk Vonn has ‘always taken happily,’ but she doesn’t ‘want a do-over’
Vonn has never shied from taking chances — she raced in the Olympics a little more than a week after tearing her ACL — no matter how they turned out.
“Downhill skiing is one of the most dangerous sports in the world, and that’s a risk that I’ve always taken happily, and this is the result, and I don’t regret it,” said Vonn, who noted she had done all she could to be fully prepped for the race. “I don’t want a do-over.”
But she will at some point decide if she wants to race again.
For now, Vonn said she’s focused simply on getting her leg healthy. Only after that’s done can she start thinking about a career that may or may not be over.
“I’m still, like I said, in survival mode that I just want to get through this phase and be able to assess where I am in my life,” said Vonn, whose 84 World Cup wins are second-most among women, trailing only teammate Mikaela Shiffrin (110). “And take count of what I’ve done and take count of what could be and make decisions in a much better place than where I am now.
“I don’t want to make a decision now because I think that would be rash and probably too emotional and I don’t want to make a mistake, you know?”
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AP Sports Writer Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report.
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing