Lindsey Vonn shares she nearly had leg amputated, needed blood transfusion

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel reacts to skier Lindsey Vonn’s crash at the 2026 Winter Olympics while competing with a ruptured ACL, as she recovers from surgery on a fractured left leg from her downhill final in Cortina.

American Olympic legend Lindsey Vonn shared Monday that she nearly lost her left leg and needed a blood transfusion after suffering a devastating crash at the Winter Games.

Vonn shared her latest update in a video posted to her Instagram. She described the last two weeks as "by far the most extreme and painful and challenging injury" she’s ever faced and thanked the doctor who performed the surgeries on her leg.

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Lindsey Vonn of Team United States during the course inspection before the Downhill Training of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre on Feb. 6, 2026 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. (Daniel Kopatsch/VOIGT/GettyImages)

"Basically, I had a complex tibia fracture," she said. "I also fractured my femur head, my tibia plateau, kinda just everything was in pieces. And the reason why it was so complex was because I had compartment syndrome. And compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck and it basically crushes everything in the compartment. So, all the muscle and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies.

"Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated and did what is called a fasciotomy where he cut open both sides of my leg, kind of fileted it open so to speak, let it breathe and he saved me."

Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during alpine skiing women’s downhill official training at the 2026