Alpine skiing-Vonn not yet ready to decide ski racing future after Olympic crash

NEW YORK, April 30 : Three-times Olympic medallist Lindsey Vonn is unsure if she will return to competitive ski racing, the 41-year-old said on Wednesday, adding that she is still processing the aftermath of a scary crash at the Milano Cortina Olympics.

The decorated American alpine skier suffered a complex tibia fracture in a crash during an Olympic downhill race on February 8 in Italy that saw her airlifted off the mountain.

The injury nearly resulted in her left leg being amputated and came nine days after Vonn tore her anterior cruciate ligament in a World Cup crash.

“It's definitely something that, you know, I want to think about, but I honestly can't,” Vonn said of her competitive future in an interview with Reuters in New York.

“I've tried and I can't really make a decision one way or the other because I haven't really processed where I am even right now.”

Vonn has had eight surgeries since the crash.

While she is no longer using a wheelchair and is working her way off crutches, there is still a long road to recovery ahead, including repairing her ACL. She hopes to be 100 per cent fit by next spring or summer.

The 2010 Olympic downhill champion announced her retirement in 2019 due to chronic injuries before staging a comeback in 2024 after knee-replacement surgery.

Vonn made history in December 2025 when she became the oldest downhill skier to win a World Cup race, and was the top-ranked in the discipline heading into Milano Cortina.

“There's definitely closure that's missing,” she said of her Olympic comeback that was cut short by the crash. “It wasn't the way I wanted to end my second chapter of my career, definitely not the way I wanted it to finish the Olympics.”

VONN HAS NO REGRETS OVER COMEBACK

That is not to say Vonn