Lindsey Vonn completes Olympic training session days after ACL injury

Olympic gold medalist and American skier Lindsey Vonn continued to defy the percentages Friday as she accomplished her first coaching session within the girls’s alpine ski downhill, only a week after utterly tearing her ACL throughout a World Cup race.

Vonn, sporting jersey quantity 10 and a brace on her left knee, efficiently accomplished her run on a day when fog slowed down skiers ready their flip on the Tofane Alpine Ski Middle in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Lindsey Vonn concentrates forward of an official girls’s alpine ski downhill coaching on the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Feb. 6, 2026. (AP Photograph/Marco Trovati)

The 41-year-old ski champion, who has a file of 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, together with six within the downhill, appeared aggressive in her first coaching session. She barely made it previous one of many gates, however after crossing the end line, she celebrated with Staff USA teammate Breezy Johnson.

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“Nothing makes me happier! Nobody believed I might be right here,” Vonn wrote in an Instagram submit on Friday earlier than her run. “However I made it!! I am right here, I am smiling and it doesn’t matter what occurs, I understand how fortunate I’m. I am not going to waste this chance. Let’s get it!!”

Her official coaching run was accomplished in 1:40.33. By means of fifteen rivals, Vonn completed her run in ninth place, lower than a second behind the main skier.

Vonn suffered quite a few accidents on Saturday after a crash throughout a World Cup race in Switzerland.

Lindsey Vonn (proper) and Breezy Johnson stand within the end space throughout an official downhill coaching for girls’s alpine snowboarding through the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on February 6, 2026. (AP Photograph/Giovanni Auletta)

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“I utterly tore my ACL. I even have bone bruises, which is a typical damage whenever you tear your ACL, plus meniscal harm, which we’re unsure if it was pre-existing or from the crash,” she instructed reporters at a information convention on Tuesday.

Quickly Vonn was again on skis and within the coaching room.

“I’ve little question in my thoughts that it will work out,” Vonn’s head coach, Chris Knight, instructed The Related Press on Wednesday. “She’s been doing field jumps, she’s making an attempt all types of issues, hundreds and stresses and issues like that simply to see the place she’s at and to see how she feels and she or he comes out all proper.”

Lindsey Vonn of Staff United States skis throughout girls’s downhill coaching on Day 0 of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on the Tofane Alpine Snowboarding Middle in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The coaching came about in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on February 6, 2026. (Julian Finney/Getty Pictures)

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Vonn made a shocking return to the game final yr after a virtually six-year absence from the competitors. Her return adopted a partial titanium substitute in her proper knee, which she had finished in 2024.

She is scheduled for her first Olympic occasion within the girls’s downhill on Sunday. She will even compete within the super-G occasion and the brand new staff mixed occasion.

The Related Press contributed to this report.

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