The Tragic End of Lindsey Vonn’s Comeback Doesn’t Erase the Triumph of Trying

CORTINA d’AMPEZZO, Italy — As the terrible event transpired on the big screen in front of a packed grandstand, there was an instantaneous spasm of sound and dismay—gasps, screams, hands on heads, hands covering mouths. And then there was a shocked, mournful, devastatingly heavy silence.

Has an Olympic venue ever gone as quiet as this one, at the base of Olympia delle Tofane?

Coming out of the starting gate at high noon local time, wearing luckless bib No. 13, American ski legend Lindsey Vonn crashed in violent, hard-to-watch fashion. An age-defying comeback that was years in the making was obliterated in a sloppy instant. It was a mercilessly stark reminder of the steep price to be paid for mistakes at high speed on veritable ice.

Just 13 seconds into her run, Vonn’s right ski pole snagged the fourth gate, sending her careening sideways in the air. Not even the greatest speed racer in the history of her sport could save that situation in mid-air, and the landing was terrifying: Vonn’s 41-year-old body hammered back to earth and was briefly obscured by a cloud of erupting snow, then her legs splayed out as she tumbled farther down the hill. By the time she came to rest on her back, skis pointing in opposite directions, a hugely anticipated ski race became a medical emergency.

As first responders rushed to attend to Vonn, her screams could be heard on the broadcast feed. There aren’t many moments in live sports worse than that. It was a cruelly intimate viewing of an athlete in severe pain—physical, emotional, probably both. An improbable dream was dying in the snow.

Nine minutes after calamity struck, an intruding sound finally broke the silent pall: the thumping of helicopter blades. Then came a sight nobody wanted to see: Against a perfect blue sky, a yellow copter came into view. It was on the way to secure Vonn and airlift her off the mountain.

After she was gone, all that remained of a story that galvanized and inspired millions was a stark notation in red letters on the scoreboard next to her name: DNF.

Vonn being airlifted from a ski slope to a hospital — Vonn was airlifted from a ski slope to a hospital for the second time in nine days. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

The sober context: This was the second time Vonn had been airlifted off a ski slope in nine days. In a career rife with broken bones and torn ligaments, she put her body through next-level hell between Jan. 30 and Feb. 8.

The first airlift was at Crans-Montana in Switzerland, when a crash in the final World Cup event before the Olympics left her with a ruptured ACL in her left knee. Many thought that major injury would be the end of her Olympic comeback quest.

Maybe it should have been. Maybe not. Her choice.

The second-guessing will be immediate and severe, rife with hindsight but not necessarily well-informed. Some will say Vonn was too old to do this, cheating Father Time after six years in retirement. Some will say that she was tempting fate by trying to race on a partial knee replacement —what might have been unprecedented medical gambit.

But the fact is, she had been the best downhiller in the world since spring 2025. In the ’25–26 season she had seven podium finishes in her first eight events and two wins. She was on fire before Crans-Montana.

Some will say the more recent, left knee injury was to blame. But there was no clear indication that any knee weakness caused her wide turn into the gate she clipped. She might simply have been doing what she’s always done—pushing the limits of speed and safety, this time pushing it farther than she could navigate.

“Things just happen so quick in this sport,” said Vonn’s American teammate, Bella Wright. “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 and all the things, it’s the last thing you want to see somebody go through. It’s the last thing you want to see for Lindsey.

“But she should be really proud of everything that she has gone through to get back here. She’s an inspiration to all of us and she should be really proud. I know it probably doesn’t feel like that right now, but I hope one day she can recognize that.”

Johan Eliasch, president of FIS, the international governing body of the sport, was asked about whether Vonn shouldn’t have raced. His response: “They don’t know Lindsey. That’s all I can say. … I don’t think the accident she had was a result necessarily of her recent injury. And that is a decision each athlete has to take themselves.”

Vonn’s disaster sucked all the oxygen out of an otherwise remarkable and compelling downhill competition. American teammate Breezy Johnson, herself making an Olympic comeback after 11th-hour injuries and crashes kept her out of the Beijing Olympics in 2022, captured Team USA’s first gold medal of Milan Cortina Games with a breathtaking charge down the mountain. And the bronze medalist was Italian local hero Sofia Goggia, who lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony in Milan on Friday night and then hustled back here, five hours away, for training Saturday morning.

Breezy Johnson and the medalists in the women’s downhill — Vonn’s Team USA teammate Breezy Johnson (center) took home the first gold medal for the U.S. at the Milan Cortina Games. | Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Those stories deserve to be told as well. But Vonn’s inspiring comeback was the biggest narrative of these Olympics, one everyone saw coming months ago. The crash in late January added to the drama in the Dolomites, creating a comeback within a comeback. The 1993 movie “Cliffhanger,” starring Sylvester Stallone, was filed in these mountains, and Vonn was authoring a spellbinding sequel of sorts.

When Vonn successfully navigated two training runs Friday and Saturday, wearing a brace on her left knee, much of the fear surrounding her attempt to compete subsided. Still, this sport is inherently scary, and the massive wave of hope that accompanied Vonn into the start house was accompanied by no small amount of apprehension.

On Sunday evening, the hospital treating Vonn confirmed she had suffered a broken leg and underwent surgery, ruling out a return to competition in Cortina. If she was set to retire for good after these Olympics, as she stated several times, then we likely have seen the last of her on skis.

Twenty-two minutes after Vonn crashed and 13 minutes after the chopper started to leave the area, the downhill race resumed. The soft techno music that was thumping through the venue returned. The rich folks in the enclosed, VIP seating went back to their champagne flutes. The profound silence that enveloped the mountain after was gone.

There were more racers and a medal ceremony. The show went on.

“It’s tragic,” Eliasch said. “But it’s ski racing and accidents do happen.”

The Olympics are compelling in part because they are rife with incredible triumphs, some of them performed by athletes who fought through daunting physical circumstances. But ultimately, this was not a Kerri Strug moment of triumph, vaulting on a broken leg and helping the U.S. win a gymnastics gold medal in 1996. It was not diver Greg Louganis, regrouping after splitting his head open on the springboard in 1988 to win two golds.

It was a crash-and-burn ending that left a pit in the stomach. But Vonn willed herself into the starting gate here, a moment of triumph that should not be lost amid the carnage of her crash.

“If I fail, who cares?” she said back in October. “I’ve already won everything. Someone asked me if not being successful at the Olympics would tarnish my legacy. No, because I tried. My legacy is not about winning, it’s about trying.”

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