Lindsey Vonn has kept the door open to a possible return to competitive skiing in the future as she begins a long recovery from her horror crash at the Winter Olympics.
Vonn underwent emergency surgery on complex leg injuries after crashing out of the downhill in Cortina d’Ampezzo having attempted to race with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
The American had come out of retirement to target a tilt at a second Olympic gold medal and looked well placed to contend having led the World Cup downhill standings in the weeks before the Games.
A major crash at the final race before the event at Crans-Montana saw Vonn suffer the ACL injury, the first of two significant set-backs for the 41-year-old.
While she had already retired once in 2019 and had a knee replacement, Vonn has insisted that she has not yet made up her mind over whether she has reached the end of her career – and hopes not to be remembered for the crash at the Milan-Cortina Games.
“I don’t want people to hang on this crash and be remembered for that,” the skier told Vanity Fair. “What I did before the Olympics has never been done before. I was number one in the standings. No one remembers that I was winning.
“I don’t like to close the door on anything, because you just never know what’s going to happen. 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.
“It’s hard to tell with this injury. It’s so f***** 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.”
Only compatriot Mikaela Shiffrin has more World Cup victories among women than Vonn, who made her debut in 2000.
Both she and the American team had faced criticism for the decision to race in the downhill given the risk of further injury, but Vonn insisted the right decision was made.
She stressed: “Everyone said it was reckless and I was taking a spot from somebody else and all this nonsense. I’m not crazy. I know what I can do and what I can’t do.”
