American skiing great Lindsey Vonn has had a ninth operation on the left leg she shattered in a crash at the Winter Olympics, and she is hoping it will be the last surgery she needs.
The 42-year-old went into surgery on Monday, 9 November, to have the metal plates and screws removed from her leg and to finally rebuild the knee ligament she tore a week before the Games began. She shared a video message before the operation, saying she was praying this would be her final procedure.
A long road back from Cortina
Vonn’s ordeal began at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in February, when she crashed just 13 seconds into the women’s downhill final on 8 February. The fall left her with a compound fracture and a tibial plateau fracture in her left leg, along with a broken right ankle.
She had already been competing with a serious injury. A week earlier, during a World Cup race, she had completely torn the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, in her left knee. Despite that, she chose to race at her fifth Olympic Games.
After the crash she was airlifted from the course to a hospital in Treviso, Italy, where she had four operations to stabilise the leg. She later returned to the United States for the rest of her treatment, and at one stage doctors had to perform a procedure to relieve dangerous pressure building up inside the leg, known as compartment syndrome, to save the limb.
The latest operation was possible only because the bones in her leg have now healed. With the hardware removed, surgeons could at last reconstruct the ACL she has been missing since before the Olympics. Vonn said she had waited nine months for her bones to heal so the ligament could be fixed.
Recovery will take time. Vonn said she faces another six to nine months of rehabilitation and physiotherapy, similar to a normal ACL recovery, before she can judge what comes next.
Despite the uncertainty, she has been named in the United States Alpine ski team for the 2026-27 World Cup season, and she is refusing to rule out a return to racing. She said she does not want to close the door on racing, adding that she needs to be fully fit and back on the mountain before making any decision about her future.
In her message before surgery, she struck a hopeful note. This will be my ninth surgery and I am praying my last, she said. There are still things that could change in surgery so we will have to wait and see how it goes, but I will keep you posted on my progress when I am out of surgery and recovering.