By Tim Spiers / The Athletic
It was in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy in 2019 that Lindsey Vonn knew her skiing career was about to end, when her body was in so much pain that she could not finish a race. And it will be here in 2026, at the Olympics, if all goes to plan, that she brings the curtain down on what is certainly one of the greatest careers in the history of skiing. Will it also be one of the greatest comebacks in modern sports?
“The fact that I’m back here is a miracle in itself,” she said in January after finishing 20th in the downhill in a World Cup race in Cortina. “I was on pace for a top-five result, and I have to be happy with that.”
She added: “It has been six years, and this is the fastest course with the most terrain that I’ve skied. The difference in speed for me was a lot, so it was hard for me to adjust. My body can sustain a lot. I’m not like I was when I retired; I can take a hit. I’ve got titanium now.”
How she was when she retired was, in her own words, broken beyond repair.
“My body is screaming at me to stop, and it’s time for me to listen,” she said in 2019 as she ended a glittering career of three Olympic medals (one gold at the Vancouver Games in 2010), four World Cup titles and eight world championship medals.
Five years later, a knee replacement took the pain away and gave her a second chance. But what did people think when she made her shock announcement of a comeback?
“I thought, she’s crazy,” said Patrick Riml, who has known Vonn since 1999 and worked with her as Alpine director of the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Association. “But also it wasn’t much of a surprise.”
He added: “When she sets herself a goal, it’s full on and full throttle. So yeah, she’s crazy, but the knee responded well, and it soon made sense.”
There are many questions to ponder around Vonn’s comeback at 40 years old, six years older than any of the 53 competitors she faced last month in Cortina. The main one, for someone who achieved pretty much all there was to achieve in the sport, is why?
“Well, she was never planning on retiring in 2019; her body basically forced her to,” said Riml, who is now Red Bull’s head of athlete special projects and, as part of a partnership with the U.S. team, is working closely with Vonn. “It was never that she’d done everything she wanted and now it was time to do something different. It was forced by injuries.”
Last August, Riml traveled with Vonn to New Zealand, where she tried skiing again with her titanium knee. It could not have gone any better.
“With this new knee that’s now a part of me, I feel like a whole new chapter of my life is unfolding before my eyes,” Vonn said on social media.
Riml added, “Everything went well and the plan was made to get a little more serious.”
The pair had kept in touch during Vonn’s retirement.
“There were days when she could only have one single run because her knee was so sore,” he said. “Now with the partial knee replacement and feeling so well, and having a quality of life she didn’t have for a long time, she’s able to do things she couldn’t for many years. And she’s pain-free.
“It’s not fun when you get up in the morning and your knee hurts. You might have perfect conditions for training, but you have to pull the plug after 10 minutes because her knee is so sore.
“She’s enjoying it more now.”
Vonn’s story is not unique; there have been many elite athletes who have found it hard to say goodbye.
Rower Steve Redgrave of Britain retired after his fourth Olympic gold medal in 1996 and gave, like Vonn, an unequivocal statement that he was done. “Anybody who sees me in a boat has my permission to shoot me,” he said.
Redgrave did come back to win a fifth gold in Sydney in 2000. But his misgivings about continuing, as with Muhammad Ali in boxing, Michael Jordan in basketball, Michael Schumacher in Formula One and Martina Hingis in tennis, were more about mind than body.
Vonn’s was almost exclusively physical. She needed to be fixed — and the replacement knee has been the catalyst behind her second lease on her skiing life.
A Minnesota native, Vonn spent five years in retirement working with her foundation and business. She played a bit of tennis, but did it in pain. Even walking was problematic. She took advice from Tom Hackett of the Steadman Clinic in Colorado, who has worked with the U.S. ski team. He helped lead her to Martin Roche, an expert in complicated knee repair.
Last April, Vonn had surgery on her right knee, in layman’s terms a partial knee replacement, with titanium alloy replacing a little bit of bone. After re-educating her own body and knee, she could do physical activities that had been beyond her capabilities for years.
It was then that she realized she could ski again, and the idea of a comeback for the world’s most successful downhill skier, with 43 World Cup wins, formed. Fast forward to this winter. More than 2,180 days after her last World Cup downhill, Vonn was back.
The instant results, given her time away from the sport and her age, were incredible; 14th in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in December and sixth and fourth in St. Anton, Austria, last month. Over the weekend, she finished 14th in the downhill at the world championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, Austria.
Given how impressed everyone has been with Vonn since her comeback, it may be a surprise to skiing outsiders that the initial reaction to her decision to end her retirement was mixed.
Michaela Dorfmeister, a two-time Olympic champion, said, “Vonn should see a psychologist; does she want to kill herself?”
Pirmin Zurbriggen, a four-time World Cup champion, said: “There is a risk Vonn will tear her artificial knee to pieces. I have the feeling that she hasn’t recognized the meaning and purpose of her other life in recent years — she has probably suffered from no longer being a celebrated champion.”
Franz Klammer, an Austrian skiing legend said, “She’s gone completely mad.”
Vonn was taken aback. But though some in the sport were frosty, the U.S. team welcomed her with open arms.
U.S. skier Lauren Macuga, who at 22 had just won her first World Cup race, said: “I always watched her growing up, and now I get to be on the team with her. It’s very cool.”
Anouk Patty, chief of U.S. Ski & Snowboard, says she is grateful Vonn is sharing her advice and experience with her teammates. With Vonn comes a roadshow all its own — her own coaches, medical people and a public relations machine.
“As a 40-year-old woman who’s doing one of the most gnarly sports out there, it’s not like it’s easy,” Patty said. “It’s really intense with massive injuries and life-or-death situations. Coming back and doing that, it appeals to people who know nothing about the sport. We’ve all gone to points in our lives when age catches up, when the knees get a little creakier. She’s blown that barrier away. It’s the Olympics next year, and that retirement ceiling just got bumped up by eight-plus years.”
Comments