It’s been a tough year for Lindsey Vonn, but the end may be in sight. On the eve of her ninth surgery resulting from an injury endured in February, the skier shared a hopeful update to social media.
Vonn is recovering from two separate injuries. The first was an ACL tear she suffered during a World Cup race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Then, just a week later at the 2026 Olympic Games in Milano Cortina, she crashed again and sustained a complex tibia fracture. From there, she was airlifted to a hospital in Treviso, Italy, where she underwent four emergency surgeries, before returning to the United States to continue her recovery.
“I was simply five inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash,” she wrote afterwards.
‘I’m doing this video beforehand because I’m actually getting pretty nervous about it.” shared Vonn on Instagram. “On the day of, I’m going to be focused and rested and trying to get through it, so i just want to walk you through the procedure’
As she described, surgeons would soon be removing all of the plates, screws and hardware from her leg. From there, they would give her a brand new ACL.
Though this will theoretically be the final surgery Vonn has to endure, it is unfortunately far from the end of her recovery process. In addition to needing time to heal the holes left behind by the screws and plates in her bones, the replacement ACL will require at least six to nine months to heal.
“This day has been looming on my calendar for a while now… and the time has finally come,” she wrote in the caption. “I’ve been nervous and anxious about it…but at the same time excited to hopefully put this behind me.”
