- Lindsey Vonn crashed while attempting to win a medal for Team USA in the women's Winter Olympic downhill on Sunday.
- The athlete's pole snagged a gate 13 seconds into her attempt, which sent her tumbling down the hill.
- The accident comes just days after she ruptured her ACL before competing at the Olympics.
Lindsey Vonn’s inspiring comeback era—which saw her returning to the Olympic Games at 41 following a period of retirement—has hurtled to a stop after her latest attempt to win gold for Team USA. While competing in the women's Winter Olympic downhill on Sunday, Lindsey crashed for the second time in just nine days, resulting in her emergency airlift removal from the course via helicopter. Her first crash, a week ahead of the Olympics, resulted in a completely ruptured ACL on her right knee.
Lindsey crashed 13 seconds after leaving the starting gate and lost control of her skis after her right pole clipped a gate. The misplacement of the pole happened just as she had time in the air, and resulted in her tumbling down the slope and landing on her back. According to ESPN, her screams were heard “ringing out soon after medical personnel arrived.”
The status and severity of Lindsey's condition has yet to be determined, but Anouk Patty, chief of sport for U.S. Ski and Snowboard, did note that the decorated athlete will eventually be okay.
“She'll be OK, but it's going to be a bit of a process,” she said. “This sport's brutal and people need to remember when they're watching [that] these athletes are throwing themselves down a mountain and going really, really fast.”
While Lindsey was incapable for bringing home a medal for Team USA, her teammate, Breezy Johnson, made history by becoming the second American woman to win the Olympic downhill after Lindsey's victory 16 years ago. The win also doubled at the first gold medal for Team USA across all sports at the Winter Olympics so far.
“I don't claim to know what she's going through, but I do know what it is to be here, to be fighting for the Olympics, and to have this course burn you and to watch those dreams die,” Breezy, who got injured in Cortina in 2022, told ESPN. “I can't imagine the pain that she's going through, and it's not the physical pain—we can deal with physical pain—but the emotional pain is something else.”
Though dealing with a potentially career-ending injury, Lindsey still found time to be a good sport: “Lindsey[’s coach told me she] was cheering for me from the helicopter,” Breezy said.
Lindsey's sister, Karin Kildow, issued a statement to NBC following her sister's crash that acknowledged her fighting spirit in the face of adversity.
“She always goes 110%,” Karin told the outlet. “There's never anything less, so I know she put her whole heart into it and sometimes, just, like, things happen. It’s a very dangerous sport. And there are a lot of variables at play. I don’t really know exactly what happened. It did look like a pretty rough fall. We’re just hoping for the best.”
