Five years ago, Lindsey Vonn retired from ski racing, largely because her aching right knee, damaged by high speed crashes and multiple surgeries, could no longer take the stress of the sport.
“My career ended with no intention of coming back,” Vonn, the winner of three Winter Olympic medals and 82 World Cup races, said in an interview last week. But seven months ago, Vonn had right-knee replacement surgery. Ten weeks later, she resumed skiing and was startled to be pain-free.
“I had a smile so wide it was coming through the back of my helmet,” Vonn said.
In a turn of events that Vonn, 40, called “amazing and definitely not planned,” she will rejoin the United States ski team on Friday with hopes of racing on the World Cup circuit this winter, perhaps as soon as next month. Vonn, who has privately logged 15 days of on-snow race training in Europe and New Zealand since August, said she would participate in the U.S. ski team’s training sessions at Copper Mountain in Colorado that begin on Saturday, focusing on the speed disciplines of super-G and downhill.
Vonn is trying to join a growing list of professional athletes — including the N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady, who won a Super Bowl at 43; Serena Williams, who left tennis just days before her 41st birthday with 23 Grand Slam titles; and Tiger Woods, who won the Masters Tournament at 43 — who extended their careers into their 40s.
“I’m trying not to get too far ahead of myself because I have quite a few hoops to jump through,” Vonn said. She added: “Obviously, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t hope to be racing. I have aspirations. I love to go fast. How fast can I go? I don’t know.
“But I’m not going to put myself in a position to fail. My goal is to enjoy this, and hopefully that road takes me to World Cup races. I wouldn’t be back on the U.S. ski team if I didn’t have intentions.”
Returning to the Olympic Games for a fifth time could be part of Vonn’s future in 15 months. The Alpine races of the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, where Vonn won 12 World Cup races from 2008 to 2018.
Asked about a potential Olympic appearance, Vonn reiterated the need to make consistent racing progress, but she did not discount the prospect of another Olympic berth.
“I’ve always enjoyed racing in Cortina and I’ve had a lot of success in Cortina,” she said. “I don’t know what the next few months and the next year and a half hold for me. So I can’t say right now if it’s a possibility.”
Vonn then paused and added, “But I think everyone knows how much I love Cortina.”
‘I’m Not Trying to Prove Anything’
At the same time, Vonn seemed eager to define the motivations for her comeback.
“I’m not chasing anything; I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone,” she said, adding: “With what I’ve done in my career, I’m thankful I can be in this position. I don’t have any pressure. It’s just me and the mountain like it was in the beginning.”
Vonn also mentioned her mother, Linda Krohn, who died two years ago of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Krohn suffered a stroke giving birth to Lindsey that left her with some paralysis in her left leg. Since she was a teenager, Vonn has often talked about the daily challenges her mother faced and did so again last week.
“I’ve always had a different perspective because of her,” Vonn said in a halting, tearful voice. “I always feel I have a responsibility to myself and to her to live every day to my maximum potential and never have any regrets. I feel now that I would regret it if I didn’t try.”
In the short term, Vonn, the only American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in downhill, is hoping to use the Copper Mountain sessions to reacquaint herself with the aerobic demands of downhill and super-G racing.
“I have done jumps already and 60-second super-Gs but I haven’t done a full-length course,” she said. “I definitely have to get through that next step in order to really make a solid plan going forward.”
She added that she had “hopes that I could do something” at the women’s World Cup races in Beaver Creek, Colo., on Dec. 14 and 15. Vonn could act as a forerunner to the competition, when skiers who are not racing test the course in the minutes before the start. Vonn’s next goal could be using a wild card registration, which gives race exemptions to former Olympic and world champions, to enter the World Cup super-G races on Dec. 21 and 22 in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
‘Everything Felt So Different’
In April, when she was being wheeled into yet another operating room for knee surgery, Vonn insisted that she had no ambition to be racing this year, or in any future year. Among other issues, she had not been able to straighten her right leg for nearly a decade, which led to problems with her hip, back and neck as well.
“I was having the surgery because I was at the end of the road,” Vonn said, describing a procedure when Dr. Martin Roche removed three millimeters of bone and replaced it with titanium. “I had the hope of being able to lead a life that was pain-free.”
Within a month of the surgery, Vonn could straighten her right leg and during rehabilitation gym sessions she discovered she could execute leg strengthening drills she had not been able to do for eight years.
“Everything felt so different,” Vonn said. It was not long before Vonn wondered how the knee would hold up on a ski slope. When a casual free-ski outing went well, she contacted her former coach Chris Knight, and, along with Patrick Riml, a longtime U.S. ski team coach and official who now works for one of Vonn’s sponsors, Red Bull, they headed to New Zealand in late August.
“I had been able to get stronger by then and could really start pushing my knee, and all that went really well,” Vonn said. “I was doing 15 runs. I haven’t done 15 runs in one day since my mid-20s.”
Another three weeks of training in Sölden, Austria, followed in October. Talks with the U.S. ski team ensued shortly thereafter.
Vonn, who first made the national team 22 years ago, will be joining a roster that is much different than the one she knew during her prime. Back then, Vonn was the star of the women’s program, a role now filled by Mikaela Shiffrin, who eclipsed Vonn’s World Cup records in 2023 and has won the most Alpine races in history. When Vonn was asked if that dynamic would take some getting used to, she answered: “No, for sure not. I’m really excited to be back on the team with her and the rest of the girls.”
Speaking of Shiffrin, she added, “I think it’s amazing what she’s done for the sport and I’m really excited to be her teammate again.”
Vonn will also return to a women’s World Cup circuit where the average age of a racer is 26 years old. That does not dissuade Vonn.
She pointed to the N.B.A. superstar LeBron James, who will turn 40 on Dec. 30.
“He’s still out there crushing it,” she said.
Hurtling down an icy racecourse at 70 miles an hour is not the same as playing basketball, and, while Vonn agreed, she said, “The risk has always been there my whole career.”
She added: “I’m not someone who is afraid. No one is immune to the dangers of downhill skiing, but I love it, and that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Vonn, who has had a long friendship with Roger Federer, the tennis legend who retired at 41, last week recounted a conversation she had with him about knowing when it is time to walk away.
“He said something that kind of stuck with me,” Vonn said. “He said: ‘I squeezed every drop out of the lemon that I had. There was nothing left for me to give.’
“And I felt like I had done that in my career. I pushed myself as hard as I could. But I feel like I have more juice in my lemon now.”
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