CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn’s mental coach didn’t need to be at her side after her most recent crash. All the way from Sacramento, and watching the race on TV, he knew what her disposition would be.
“I knew the minute she crashed that she would race [in the Olympics] if there was any opportunity to race,” said Armando Gonzalez, who has worked closely with the ski-racing legend since 2020.
“She’d go out there and be the last gladiator standing if it were up to her.”
At 41, Vonn is pushing her body to the limit, competing in the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics despite suffering a complete rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, along with meniscus and bone damage in a Jan. 30 crash in a downhill race in Crans Montana, Switzerland.
On Friday, a week after that World Cup accident, she completed her first downhill training run. On a day when fog delayed competition at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina, Vonn completed the course in 1 minute, 40.33 seconds, putting her in ninth place through 15 competitors and less than a second off the leader.
She wore a brace to protect her injured left knee. The ACL acts as a stabilizer in the knee, preventing it from buckling and keeping the tibia from moving too far forward. It’s essential to rotational stability, which plays a role in sudden movements and jumping. Downhill ski racers are not running backs or point guards, however, and don’t make those same jolting lateral moves and therefore, experts say, are better able to compensate for a torn ACL.
Still, Vonn has a remarkably high pain threshold.
“Her ability to overcome injury, to push through, her mental attitude, her resilience, it’s amazing,” said Shawna Niles, her massage therapist.
At an Olympics news conference this week, Vonn said her knee felt stable, not swollen, and that she will be ready to compete Sunday in the women’s downhill. She has been in intensive therapy this week, posting videos of her squatting, jumping and moving laterally in a knee brace.
Even some fellow Olympians are astonished.
“She appears to be quite superhuman at times, and she is that right now,” said Brazilian ski racer Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who said Vonn “has been an inspiration for me ever since I was introduced to skiing.”
In an interview with The Times, Gonzalez said the latest comeback “isn’t about proving anything to anyone.”
Gonzalez and Niles were made available to The Times by FIGS, the official scrubwear of the USA medical team at the Olympics.
“It’s about defying the odds,” Gonzalez said of Vonn, “and being the competitor who always finds a way.”
Vonn, a three-time Olympic medalist, is attempting an astounding comeback after almost six years removed from racing and a partial titanium knee replacement in 2024. She had 84 World Cup wins in 21 seasons, making her among the most decorated ski racers in history.
“Unfortunately, in my career, I’ve had a lot of challenges,” she told reporters. “I have always pushed the limits and in downhill, it’s a very dangerous sport, and anything can happen. And because I push the limits, I crash and I’ve been injured more times than I would like to admit, to myself even.
“But those are the cards I’ve been dealt in my life, and I’m going to play my cards the best way I can.”
Despite the injury that would sideline even elite athletes, Vonn called this Olympic opportunity “icing on the cake” of her storied career.
“I never expected to be here,” she said. “I felt like this was an amazing opportunity to close out my career in a way that I wanted to. It hasn’t gone exactly the way I wanted it to, but I don’t have any regrets.
“I’m still here. I think I’m still able to fight. I think I’m still able to try.”
Gonzalez said that Vonn began working with him after her 2019 retirement from the race circuit.
“She said, `I need to realize that I’m more than just a skier,’” he said. “A lot of our work was helping her make peace with walking away.”
He said that she never really had a chance to establish an identity outside of skiing because she was such a phenom, and so squarely in the public spotlight.
“Once she separated her identity from skiing,” he said, “she became free to love the craft again.”
The mental coaching now, Gonzalez said, has “mostly been helping minimize the noise that comes with being in the public eye.”
There’s no crucible more scrutinized in the sport than the Olympic Games. And Vonn, who is scheduled to race in the downhill, super-G and possibly the new team combined event, is prepared to go despite the physical challenges.
“I’m not letting this slip through my fingers,” she said. “I’m going to do it, end of story. … I’m not crying. My head is high. I’m standing tall and I’m going to do my best, whatever the result is.”
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