\n<\/p>\n
The 2010 Olympic downhill champion said she has “one more surgery left to take out the metal and to replace my [anterior cruciate ligament] ACL” and then a lengthy period of recuperation.<\/p>\n
“Once I get my ACL fixed, then that’s another six months, so I have at least a year and a half ahead of me before I could really be back to 100%, even just training in the gym,” she added.<\/p>\n
Vonn was racing at the Olympics in Cortina nine days after rupturing ligaments in her left knee when she struck a gate and crashed 13 seconds into her downhill run.<\/p>\n
She was airlifted off the piste and diagnosed with a complex tibia fracture in her left leg.<\/p>\n
“I’m still in survival mode. I just want to get through this phase and be able to assess where I am in my life,” said Vonn, who won her two world titles in 2009.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to make a decision now because I think that would be rash and probably too emotional and I don’t want to make a mistake.”<\/p>\n
Vonn, who has won 84 World Cup races and is second in the all-time women’s list behind fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin, suffered a number of serious leg injuries before initially retiring from the sport in 2019.<\/p>\n
After having a partial right knee replacement, she announced her shock return in 2024.<\/p>\n
Vonn had been tipped to win a medal at her fifth and final Olympics, and competed despite suffering the ACL injury in Switzerland in the last World Cup race before the Games.<\/p>\n
She described the injury at the Games as “much different” to any of her previous ones in terms of “the severity of the injury and understanding that I could have lost my leg and how bad things were”.<\/p>\n
She added: “I can deal with a lot of pain, but this was so extreme. It’s not even been in the universe of pain as what I’ve had before.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n