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Lindsey Vonn’s career has spanned several decades. Contains lots of gold and several crashes. Her last Olympics was over after just twelve seconds.
When the Games’ biggest star crashed, there was silence. In Cortina’s finish area, in all other arenas where media and spectators would follow Vonn. The entire Olympics went eerily silent.
Lindsey Vonn had thrown herself into the downhill with one knee that is a prosthesis and with the other that has a cruciate ligament that is broken.
But then there are some extreme athletes who make up the last percent.
That Lindsey Vonn decided to start in one of the most dangerous sports at the age of 41 and with those conditions can easily be called madness for 99 percent of all people. But then there are some extreme athletes who make up the last percent.
They make us in the 99 percent group wonder what is possible to pass. Sometimes they perform what seems inhumane. Sometimes it doesn’t work and then the consequences can be devastating.
That it was Lindsey Vonn which made us wonder has made her the biggest star of the 2026 Olympics. Already in the first part of her career, she raised her celebrity status far beyond the ski slopes by mixing the gold of the alpine speed madness with the glamor of the red carpets and the relationship with Tiger Woods.
Just over a week ago, the crash occurred in the Crans-Montana downhill race.
When Vonn retired after the WC in Åre 2019, his body needed repair. A titanium prosthesis in the right knee took away the pain. But time made the desire for a skiing comeback.
In December 2025 she was back on the competition hill and last month she stood on top of a podium in the World Cup again, for the 84th time.
But then a little over a week ago came the crash in the Crans-Montana downhill race, it cost her the cruciate ligament in her left knee.
When there was doubt about whether the cruciate ligament was really off, Vonn’s answer was yes, 100 percent.
The Olympic plans and career should have been over but that percentage of people who are extreme athletes don’t care about what should be possible. The knee was packaged so that it would last for one ride and when she was to compete in the luxury Italian resort where the Bond movie “From a Deadly Point of View” was shot, Vonn’s career was like a movie script.
Tonya Harding who, together with Nancy Kerrigan, created a drama with iron pipes, tears and figure skating.
Hollywood likes stories from the Winter Olympics.
A film has been made about the Jamaicans who went bobsledding. About Eddie the Eagle, the Brit who jumped down a hill with glasses as thick as bottle bottoms.
There have been film(s) made about the USA team that in 1980 created hockey miracles on ice and of course about Tonya Harding who together with Nancy Kerrigan created a drama with iron pipes, tears and figure skating.
Lindsey Vonn herself played the biggest supporting role in a Swedish sports drama that could become the movie “When Anja cheated death”.
In 2010, Anja Pärson crashed in the Canadian Whistler downhill race. When I looked up at the Olympic hill and saw Anja’s apparently lifeless body bouncing down, I had time to think: “No, no, no. My God, she’s dying.”
But Anja Pärson managed, competed in the combined event and took a well-deserved bronze. The medal was secured when the leader crossed as the last slalom skier. It was Lindsey Vonn.
Anja Pärson also belongs to that percentage of athletes that the rest of us shouldn’t even try to understand. That she stood on the starting line after the hard crash was only because it was possible, It didn’t make sense.
It was absolutely borderline insane for Lindsey Vonn to start in the Olympics. But as long as it was possible to ride, she was ready to try the downhill race.
It looked like the injured left knee couldn’t hold on.
In an early turn, the test ended in brutal fashion. It looked like the injured left knee couldn’t hold on, she got carried away and flew handless.
Lindsey Vonn’s long, successful and dramatic career probably ended in a sled that took off from the Olympic hill with the help of a helicopter.
Read more:
Crashed straight away – Lindsey Vonn to hospital by helicopter
