Lindsey Vonn faces date with downhill destiny at 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics
The 41-year-old, who ruptured an ACL in her left knee before the Games, will compete for a medal against the world’s best women skiers
Lindsey Vonn will attempt the seemingly impossible on Sunday when she launches herself down one of the world’s most prestigious pistes hunting for an Olympic medal in the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics downhill.
One of world sport’s most recognisable faces and an Alpine skiing icon, 41-year-old Vonn is battling ruptured knee ligaments and Father Time in her favoured event in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
The American has insisted since revealing she had ruptured an ACL in her left knee that she could not only compete but win against the world’s best women skiers, some of whom are nearly half her age.
She has already defied the odds by completing two training runs just a week after suffering the injury in the last World Cup downhill race, in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, before the Olympics.
And Vonn, the 2010 Olympic downhill champion who came out of retirement in 2024 thanks to a titanium implant in her right knee, is confident she could complete her greatest comeback yet on Sunday, when she will be the 13th out of the starting gate.
She has batted aside those who doubt her ability to perform with such an injury, and took to social media to fire back at a doctor for doubting her ACL tear was “fresh” from Crans-Montana.
