As of Wednesday afternoon, Lindsey Vonn had completed three surgeries on her left leg, which sustained a complex fracture after a major crash in Sunday’s Olympic downhill.
“Success today has a completely different meaning than it did a few days ago. I’m making progress and while it is slow, I know I’ll be ok,” Vonn wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, sharing the success of the procedures.
Vonn said that her Olympic run was not a failure, but a cost of daring to try.
She wrote in an Instagram post Monday night that while her Olympic dream ended abruptly, she has no regrets about taking the risk to stand in the start gate and try.
“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn wrote on Instagram, her first public comments since the fall. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life.”
Pushing an aggressive line early in the women’s downhill, she said she was “five inches too tight” when her right arm hooked inside a gate, twisting her off balance and sending her down hard. She emphasized that the fall had nothing to do with her torn ACL or any other past injuries.
“I tried. I dreamt. I jumped. And sometimes we fall,” she said. “Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there with a chance to win was a victory in and of itself.”
Her father, Alan Kildow, told the Associated Press Monday that while Vonn’s mindset remains strong, he hopes the crash marks the end of her racing career.
“She’s 41 years old, and this is the end of her career,” Kildow said. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”
Kildow said family members have remained with Vonn continuously since the crash and that she will return home once doctors determine she is able to travel. He described her as emotionally steady in the aftermath.
“She knows physical pain,” he said. “She understands the situation she’s in, and she’s handling it better than I expected.”
Vonn crashed 13.4 seconds into Sunday’s downhill after catching her arm inside the fourth gate, losing control on the first jump and twisting to land perpendicular to the slope.
She remained down for more than 10 minutes as medical personnel attended to her before she was airlifted from the Olympia delle Tofane course at 12:17 p.m. CET. The race was paused for nearly 20 minutes.
Ca’ Foncello Hospital in Treviso confirmed Sunday afternoon that Vonn underwent orthopedic surgery Sunday afternoon to stabilize a fracture in her left leg. Olympic medical staff initially treated her before transferring her to the Codivilla Polyclinic for diagnostic testing, then admitting her to Ca’ Foncello Hospital, where a team performed the procedure.
The fracture occurred in the same leg where Vonn ruptured her ACL just nine days earlier in a World Cup crash in Crans-Montana. Kildow said the knee injury played no role in Sunday’s fall, pointing instead to the risks inherent in downhill racing and the way Vonn was attacking the course.
The family watched the crash from the finish area.
“First, the shock and the horror,” Kildow said. “Seeing an impact like that is traumatic. It takes time to even process what’s happened.”
Vonn’s coach, Aksel Lund Svindal, and teammates looked on from the stands, while Breezy Johnson, sitting in the leader’s chair at the finish, cried and crossed her fingers toward the broadcast in support.
“Life is too short not to take chances on yourself,” said Vonn. “Because the only failure in life is not trying.”