By Mallory Mattingly
During her final run at the 2026 Winter Olympics, downhill skier Lindsey Vonn suffered a horrible crash that caused her to be airlifted to the nearest hospital.
But after the crash, the athlete shared a heartfelt message of hope.
“Yesterday, my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a storybook ending or a fairy tale; it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing, the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches,” the 41-year-old wrote on social media. “I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me, which resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”
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A week before that crash, Vonn went down hard again, which left her with a complete ACL rupture in her left knee. This meant that she was chasing her dream of Olympic gold without an ACL, but still, that didn’t stop her.
“Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly,” she said. “While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport.”
“And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is also the beauty of life; we can try,” the 2010 Olympic gold medalist continued. “I tried. I dreamt. I jumped.”
“I hope that if you take away anything from my journey, it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying,” Vonn emphasized. “I believe in you, just as you believed in me.”
While the conclusion of Vonn’s Olympic career is not the feel-good story you love to see in the movies, it’s a reminder of resilience and determination in the midst of heartbreak.
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