Lindsey Vonn Competing In Olympics Without ACL. Responds To Claims

Team USA’s Lindsey Vonn is seen here during training for the women’s downhill event at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games on February 7, 2026. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP via Getty Images)

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You can say that it’s all downhill for now for U.S. ski team veteran Lindsey Vonn at the 2026 Winter Olympics at Milan-Cortina, Italy. She’s scheduled to compete in the women’s downhill final on February 8 after going through training runs without missing a beat at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre. But in her fifth Olympic games, the 41-year-old Vonn will be missing for the first time something typically considered crucial for skiing—a left anterior cruciate ligament. That’s after a crash on January 30 during a ski race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, left her left ACL completely ruptured.

Vonn Completely Ruptured Her Left ACL On January 30

Yeah, I can tell you from first-hand experience that an ACL rupture is kind of the opposite of fun. I’ve written before in Forbes about ACL tears when Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins suffered similar injuries. ACL might as well stand for “a crucial ligament” in each of your knees. It runs from your thigh bone (femur) to your main lower leg bone (tibia) and thus is one of the things that helps keep your knee stable. Without the ACL, your knee joint can go a-rocking.

Normally, if Vonn had a lot more time—like nine months or so—between races, she probably would have gotten her ACL surgically reconstructed. But instead of nine months, she had like nine days between the injury and the Winter Olympics downhill finals. So, she was left with the choice between competing without a left ACL or not competing in Milan-Cortina at all. Not surprisingly, she chose the former. And so far, her training runs at the Olympics have gone smoothly with her left knee seemingly holding up well.

Vonn’s Muscles, Other Ligaments And Knee Brace Can Help Stabilize Her Knee

Lindsey Vonn of Team United States goes through a downhill training tun on day one of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. (Photo by Daniel Kopatsch/VOIGT/GettyImages)

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Vonn is doing what most skiers would not be able to do. But then again, Vonn is not like most skiers. Most skiers haven’t won four World Cup overall championships or a record eight World Cup season titles in the downhill discipline, five titles in the super-G and three consecutive titles in the combined. You could say that Vonn has had quite a Vonn-ted career.

Vonn wouldn’t be the first elite athlete to continue competing despite rupturing an ACL, though. You may have heard of NFL greats John Elway and Hines Ward. Well, both of them competed on the football field for many years without left ACLs. There’s also de case of DeJuan Blair, who starred as a basketball forward at the University of Pittsburgh and then had a productive seven-year career in the NBA without ACLs in, yikes, either of his knees. Both of those sports involve a lot of running, cutting and jumping and torquing of the knees.

If you do have the misfortune of rupturing your ACL, don’t automatically assume that you have to go through ACL reconstruction surgery. The question is how well the other structures around the knee can keep the knee stable through the activities that you plan to do. These other structures include the three other ligaments—the posterior cruciate, medial collateral and lateral collateral—and the muscles that surround the knee—namely the quadriceps in front and the hamstrings in back.

At this point, you can assume that Vonn’s leg muscles have long been strong and well-conditioned. She’s probably been working extra hard to keep them that way. Wearing an external brace around the knee can provide her knee additional stability as well.

Vonn also presumably has doctors closely monitoring her and regularly testing the stability of her knee. This can include performing maneuvers that check how much give and motion her knee has. They are probably seeing how well she can perform different motions and maneuvers similar to what she will have to do on the slopes and checking for pain and other symptoms.

Her doctors will know best as to what she can and can’t do and what further damage she may be risking. They’ve seen the results of her imaging and other tests and have been able to directly examine her. Without such firsthand knowledge, it’s difficult to speculate how much the injury will hinder her .

Vonn Responded To Speculation About Her Situation

But that hasn’t prevented others from rendering unsolicited opinions from afar about Vonn’s situation. One was an opinion piece in USA Today written by Greg Graberwhose byline describes him as a mental performance coach for elite athletes. In the piece, Graber offered the following: “I am no doctor, but it would seem that she is risking long-term physical repercussions by refusing to hang up her skis at this point” and “It has been my experience working with elite athletes that it is not uncommon for many of them to base most of their self-worth on their athletic performance.”

Vonn then basically put a big X on what Graber wrote:

As you can seem, Vonn posted, “I’m sorry Greg but this is a very odd opinion piece. The pain and suffering is the point? I’m searching for meaning? Why am I taking risk ‘at my age?’ This ageism stuff is getting really old.” She continued with, “My life does not revolve around ski racing. I am a woman that loves to ski. I don’t have an identity issue, I know exactly who I am.”

Then there was Brian Sutterer, MD, a physiatrist based in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, who posted on X, “There’s a VERY important aspect of this that we do not know — What was the state of her ACL before the crash last week?” He suggested that Vonn may have torn her ACL before January 30 and concluded his X post with, “Also, someone who had a prior tear/surgery may not be as swollen and painful with a repeat injury. Bottom line, I don’t think this was a bread and butter, fresh ACL tear like everyone is thinking.”

Vonn, who probably knows her own ACL situation better than someone who has never examined her, responded, “lol thanks doc. My ACL was fully functioning until last Friday. 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.” You can see the exchange here:

Yeah, that conversation seemed to go downhill pretty quickly. It looks like what will also going downhill on Sunday in Milan Cortina is Vonn. Unless anything changes, she should be in the lineup when the women’s downhill final begins at 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. She’s also slotted to race in the women’s Super-G final on Thursday, February 12. And at this point, there’s no specific reason to believe that her chances of medaling in either event will be anything but Super Good.