Defiant Vonn won’t give in despite ‘100% gone’ knee

Olimpia delle Tofane belongs to Lindsey Vonn. The 41-year-old American skier has won 12 World Cup events on the 1.4-mile course. No one has won more. With a vertical drop of 2,493ft and a jump at Tofana Schuss that Vonn once described as “one of the most spectacular parts of any speed track that I’ve ever raced on”, it was the perfect opportunity for her to make a return to Olympic competition, seven years after she retired.

It is an opportunity so perfect that Vonn is determined that nothing will get in her way. A week before the Games began, she crashed at a World Cup event in Crans-Montana. Airlifted off the mountain, it was revealed that she had completely torn the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee. Calling a press conference, five days before the first alpine skiing event, the downhill, Vonn indicated she would still compete.

Knee brace strapped on, she has completed two training runs on the Cortina track, going 11th fastest in the first on Friday. She went two seconds faster yesterday. It is a course that holds great meaning for her: she won her first World Cup medal there way back in 2004. Vonn said in a press conference that she would not be attempting this were it not that the Olympics was being held on this course.

It is also a course that can cause plenty of issues, as some of Vonn’s team-mates know. Breezy Johnson, who went fastest in a final training run yesterday that was curtailed by bad weather, tore her own ACL there weeks ahead of the 2022 Olympics. She decided not to ski at that Games.

Vonn, though, is something of an expert when it comes to ACL injuries. She pulled out of the Sochi Games in 2014 because of an ACL tear. She has already had a partial knee replacement in her right knee just in order to come out of retirement. When a doctor suggested on X that her injury might not be a fresh ACL tear, but instead something she had got used to over time, Vonn herself replied: “lol thanks doc. My ACL was fully functioning until last Friday. Just because it seems impossible to you doesn’t mean it’s not possible. And yes, my ACL is 100% ruptured. Not 80% or 50%. It’s 100% gone.”

Prior to the injury, Vonn looked like she was in genuine medal contention, with World Cup wins in St Moritz in Switzerland and in Altenmarkt-Zauchensee in Austria. They were her first World Cup wins since 2018 and made her the oldest downhill skiing World Cup winner. In this new context, it would be a miracle if she makes it down in one piece.

“I know what my chances were before the crash, and I know my chances aren’t the same today, but there’s still a chance,” said Vonn. “And as long as there’s a chance, I will try.”

The Olimpia delle Tofane is familiar to many of the participants given that it is used regularly on the World Cup circuit. That was not the case in Beijing or Pyeongchang, but does apply to the men’s course which is Stelvio in Bormio, about a five-hour drive from Cortina.

The men’s downhill was the first medal event of this Olympics and 24-year-old Swiss Franjo von Allmen claimed gold. He was joined on the podium by two Italians, Giovanni Franzoni and Dominik Paris, who finished 0.2 and 0.5 seconds respectively behind Von Allmen’s winning time of one minute 51.61 seconds. It was particularly emotive for both representatives of the home nation, who were rocked last year by the death of their team-mate Matteo Franzoso after he suffered a head trauma during a crash at a training camp in Chile.

Paris had been in the same training camp, while Franzoni was particularly close to Franzoso. After winning a first World Cup gold in January, he said: “Matteo will be with me in every race.” He once again paid tribute to his friend after winning the silver medal, saying that he had managed to transform his grief into an “incredible energy that pushes me to give my all in every race”.

Paris, meanwhile, is 36 years old and had never won a medal at an Olympics. He won his first World Cup gold on this course in 2012 and this was his fifth Olympic Games.

It was one of Von Allmen’s compatriots who was the favourite. Marco Odermatt won gold in the giant slalom in Beijing in 2022 and is leading in the World Cup downhill rankings, but could manage only fourth. With none of the three medal-winners from 2022 starting, the race was always an opportunity for new skiers to come to the fore.

Von Allmen has long been seen as a potential Olympic champion, but he almost stepped away from the sport when his father died seven years ago when he was 17. “I thought a lot about him today,” he said.

Photograph by Avalon