Lindsey Vonn is home — or at least on home soil.
After a week in an Italian hospital and four surgeries on her fractured left leg, the American Alpine skiing star and St. Paul native posted on social media Monday night that she has made it back across the Atlantic.
“Haven’t stood on my feet in over a week…been immobile in a hospital bed since my race,” she wrote in a post on X. “And although I’m not yet able to stand, being back on home soil feels amazing. Huge thank you to everyone in Italy for taking care of me.”
The post came a little more than a day after Vonn posted a reel of her friends and family getting her cleaned up for her re-entry into civilization. They washed her hair and massaged her cheeks and her good right leg and essentially made her look like Lindsey Vonn again, or something like that.
And that came a little more than 24 hours after Vonn reported that her fourth surgery of the week went well enough to get her approved to head back home. She has said her road to recovery is long — and one she has travelled many times during her career.
Vonn, 41, fell 13 seconds into her downhill run on Feb. 8 at the Winter Olympics, a race she attempted despite rupturing her left anterior cruciate ligament nine days before. She cut a turn too tight, hooked a gate in midair, and never had a chance of landing safely after that. Vonn had come out of retirement in 2024 to attempt a comeback after having a successful partial right knee replacement surgery.
That comeback was a smashing success. Vonn once again became the world’s dominant downhill skier. But what always made Vonn great, that willingness to take risks and ski right on the edge of recklessness — and sometimes over it — also made her prone to crashing and serious injuries.
That’s what unfolded in the downhill race in what was supposed to be the culmination of her comeback.
In the week since the crash, Vonn has become a symbol of bravery and an inspiration — and also a lightning rod for criticism from people who think she behaved recklessly by trying to ski through a serious injury.
She has said she does not want anyone’s empathy or pity. That is not what her story is about, she insisted.
“I hope instead it gives you strength to keep fighting, because that is what I am doing and that is what I will continue to do. Always,” she wrote last week, claiming that she was healthier in the downhill starting hut than she had been at many other moments in her career.
Her words in her first post the day after the crash will likely live in a lot of fans’ memories for a long time.
“I dreamt. I tried. I jumped,” she wrote.
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