Updated February 8, 2026 at 3:37 PM AKST
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn's comeback had been years in the making, and the goal had always been the 2026 Olympic Games in Cortina. This is the site of so many cherished memories for the superstar skier in her decorated career, from her first-ever World Cup podium finish in 2004, to the Super-G race 11 years later that made her the sport's then-winningest female skier of all time.
But the slope at Cortina — the famed Olimpia delle Tofane downhill course — can be cruel, and the memory made Sunday will be devastating, as Vonn's hopes of capping her comeback with an Olympic medal ended instead with a medical evacuation by helicopter off the slope.
Just 13 seconds into her downhill run, as she skied through the fourth gate of the course, Vonn hooked her right arm and shoulder around the gate, which swung her whole body to the right as she skied off a jump. Her body spun in the air then landed — hard — on the snow and tumbled end-over-end down the slope.
That Vonn competed in Sunday's race at all made her performance a comeback-within-a-comeback— first from retirement, and then from an eleventh-hour tear of her left anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, in a race just nine days ago. Her sheer determination and audacity to compete despite the ACL tear had turned Sunday's race into perhaps the most anticipated event of the Olympic Games.
Her crash was all the more devastating because of it. At the finish line in Cortina, at least a thousand faces in the grandstand turned in unison from anticipation to anguish, their cheers silenced, as the big screen broadcast her tumble. On television, announcers in every language cried out upon watching it unfold.
The extent of her injuries was not immediately clear. In a brief statement, U.S. Ski & Snowboard said she had "sustained an injury, but is in stable condition." According to reports by the Associated Press and Reuters, Vonn was transported to a hospital in Treviso, a city two hours south of Cortina, where she underwent an operation on a fracture in her left leg.
Vonn's fall cast a pall on the results of Sunday's race, where Vonn's teammate Breezy Johnson, brought Team USA the first medal of the 2026 Games.
The 30-year-old American Breezy Johnson won the gold medal with a time of 1:36.10. Johnson had mounted her own comeback from injury to reach these Olympics after badly hurting her knee in a pair of crashes shortly before the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
The second of Johnson's crashes that year took place, by chance, on the downhill course in Cortina.
"I do know what it is to be here, to be fighting for the Olympics, and to have this course burn you, and to watch, for me, those dreams die," Johnson told reporters after the race. "It was one of the most heart-breaking moments of my life, and I can't imagine the pain she's going through."
Johnson's gold medal was only the second ever for an American woman in the Olympic downhill; the first was won by Vonn in 2010.
Germany's Emma Aicher claimed the silver medal, and Italy's Sofia Goggia won the bronze.
"She's an inspiration to all of us"
Vonn, the 41-year-old Team USA star, had already had a decorated career when she retired in 2019 after a series of injuries to her knees had her convinced she would be unable to race again.
But a partial knee replacement in 2024 changed that story, and she soon returned to full-time training. Before her ACL tear late last month at a race in Switzerland, Vonn's performance this season had left no room for debate. Coming into the Olympics, she was atop the FIS leaderboard with two World Cup wins, bringing her career total to 84, and five other podium finishes, and she was considered a serious contender for the gold medal.
But the ACL tear seriously hurt those chances, she acknowledged last week. Still, her knee felt good, she said — stable, not swollen and free of pain — and she said was determined to race.
"Knowing Lindsey, she knows her body, she knows her injuries and knows what she's capable to perform. So I'm sure she made a correct decision to start today," said Johan Eliasch, president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, who spoke to reporters after the crash.
That Cortina is the host of the women's alpine events at the 2026 Olympics had been a key motivator for Vonn, she told reporters last year.
"If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it's not worth it," she said last October. "But for me there's something special about Cortina that always pulls me back, and it's pulled me back one last time."
Vonn had successfully completed two training runs in the days leading up to the race. It was not immediately clear whether Vonn's ACL tear played a role in the crash.
Vonn's teammate Bella Wright, who watched the crash from the top of the hill as she awaited her own turn on the course, called the fall "heart-breaking."
"It looked like Lindsey had incredible speed out of that turn, and she hooked her arm — and it's just over, just like that, after all the preparation, after years of hard work and rehabilitation," Wright said. "She's an inspiration to all of us, and she should be really proud. I know it probably doesn't feel like that now, but I hope one day she can recognize that."
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