CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn's pursuit of an against-all-odds Olympic medal ended Sunday in a devastating crash only 13.4 seconds into the downhill final.
Skiing in a brace just nine days after rupturing the ACL in her left knee, Vonn did not finish the final at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. She was attempting to become the oldest Alpine skier, man or woman, to win an Olympic medal.
Under ideal, bluebird conditions at the craggy top of the famed Tofane course in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Vonn pushed off as the 13th woman to go down the 1.6-mile-long course, with 23 competitors waiting their turn behind her.
Vonn tapped her poles together three times before pulling out of the gate. Before reaching the first marker of the course, however, she crashed and tumbled, hitting her head in the process until coming to a merciful stop. Screams of pain could be heard on the broadcast.
The crowd waiting at the bottom of the hill, which included her family, fell eerily silent, with lips pursed and arms crossed.
Within minutes, medical personnel had surrounded Vonn and began securing her to a stretcher. Zipped into a red bag, Vonn was airlifted off the course. Half an hour after a buzzing crowd at the finish line had expected to see Vonn for the first time, they watched as a helicopter passed over their heads, airlifting her away.
Vonn’s sister, Karin Kildow, has said Vonn “put her whole heart” into making the Olympics.
“That’s definitely the last thing we wanted to see,” Kildow told NBC’s Cara Banks. “When that happens, you’re just immediately hoping she’s okay, and it was scary. When you start to see the stretchers being put out, it’s not a good sign.”
“She dared greatly, and she put it all out there.”
Kildow confirmed Vonn remains under medical evaluation and that the family has not heard anything beyond that. Team USA’s Head Speed Coach Paul Kristofic said Vonn remained under medical evaluation in Cortina, with the team yet to hear any update on Vonn’s condition.
“We don’t know anything really yet,” Kristofic told reporters. “She’s with a medical team in the hospital."
“She’s getting evaluated right now in Cortina. And then, obviously, depending on the severeness of the injury, they’re going to make decisions where to put her.”
American Breezy Johnson took the early lead with her time of 1:36.1 as the sixth racer down the course, and it narrowly held up to earn a gold medal. The difference between gold and silver was just four-hundredths of a second. Johnson joins Vonn as the only American women to win Olympic downhill gold.
But the race will largely be remembered for Vonn.
The scene was difficult to square with the seemingly invincible show of strength — including finishing with the third-fastest time on Saturday in training — she had put on since injuring her knee barely a week earlier.
And the result was all the more brutal because the course is Vonn's favorite on which to race.
“My heart goes out to her, I hope it’s not as bad as it looked and I know how difficult it is to ski this course,” said Johnson, who was forced to miss the 2022 Olympics after crashing on this same course and injuring her knee. “And how sometimes because you love this course so much when you crash on it and it hurts you like that it hurts that much worse.”
The downhill was already one of the signature events of Alpine skiing, a can't-look-away showcase as women carve down mountains, around curves and over jumps, pushing 80 mph. And Vonn was already, without hyperbole, the biggest star of these Olympics. Yet Sunday’s competition in Cortina, Italy, drew even more intrigue than is typical as the world awaited the answer to whether Vonn could somehow medal only nine days after she crashed and ruptured a ligament crucial to stabilizing her left knee.
Vonn was attempting to win the downhill 16 years after she did it at the Vancouver Olympics. She had won two Olympic bronze medals in her career, as well, in downhill in 2018 and super-G in 2010.
Vonn faced the twin challenges of health and rust when she announced in 2024 that she was coming out of retirement five years after injuries had driven her into retirement. Yet a robotically-assisted surgery that partially replaced her right knee gave Vonn a surge of confidence and what she called her most consistently healthy season in a decade.
This season, her health helped her finish on the podium in all five World Cup races in which she competed, including two victories, making her the oldest ever to win on the prestigious skiing circuit. Those performances seemed to put an end to questions about whether her ambitions for a medal in Cortina were real or a quixotic quest.
But her crash in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, late last month, which required an airlift, cast doubt on her ability to again topple the world’s best skiers.
Vonn did not undergo surgery, however, and wore a brace while going through two successful tests of the knee during training runs Friday and Saturday, when she reached 78 mph.
A half-hour before the final began, Kildow, told NBC News she had been “very, very, very nervous for days on end, and today I woke up and felt amazing. We’re blasting music, we’re like today is a beautiful day and all the energy is in the right place, so we’re really, really excited. I can’t wait to watch her.”
In the final, Vonn had the advantage of familiarity. She has called Cortina’s course her favorite to race and a major factor why she wanted to mount the comeback for the Olympics at all. Of her 84 World Cup victories, 12 have come in Cortina. It is not the favorite course for everyone, however. Johnson's 2022 Olympic hopes were dashed when she crashed and hurt a knee here, and Mikaela Shiffrin also injured ligaments in a knee during a 2023 crash.
Yet the final Vonn also required her to push her knee further than in either of her two training runs, when she could be seen pulling back around some turns so as not to exert too much strain before the main event.
ACL injuries have long been among the most devastating in sports, typically requiring at least six months of strenuous recovery. That she could compete in the Olympics just over a week after a tear had drawn some incredulity, such as from a doctor known for his social media account analyzing sports injuries.
“My ACL was fully functioning until last Friday,” Vonn responded Saturday. “Just because it seems impossible to you doesn’t mean it’s not possible. And yes, my ACL is 100% ruptured. Not 80% or 50%. It’s 100% gone.”
Within seconds, Sunday, so was her incredible attempt to medal.
Andrew Greif reported from Milan and Molly Hunter reported from Cortina d’Ampezzo.
