2010 Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn is rejoining the U.S. Alpine skiing team for training and could return to competition this season after retiring in 2019.
Vonn, 40, has not announced a comeback to racing yet, but she has been training on snow in Europe and New Zealand in recent weeks. She is expected to practice with the U.S. team starting this weekend in Colorado.
“I’m trying not to get too far ahead of myself because I have quite a few hoops to jump through,” Vonn said, according to The New York Times, adding, “Obviously, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t hope to be racing. I have aspirations. I love to go fast. How fast can I go? I don’t know.
“But I’m not going to put myself in a position to fail. My goal is to enjoy this, and hopefully that road takes me to World Cup races. I wouldn’t be back on the U.S. ski team if I didn’t have intentions.”
Vonn said that she “hopes that I could do something” at the first World Cup speed races of the season, a downhill and super-G on Dec. 14-15 in Beaver Creek, Colorado. That could mean skiing as a forerunner before the competition, then possibly returning to racing on the World Cup from Dec. 21-22 in super-Gs in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Vonn told the Times.
“I have done jumps already and 60-second super-Gs, but I haven’t done a full-length course,” Vonn said, according to the Times. “I definitely have to get through that next step in order to really make a solid plan going forward.”
The four-time World Cup overall champion retired at the 2019 World Championships. She cited the toll ski racing had taken on her body over an 18-year career filled with crashes and injuries — specifically the pain in her right knee, which had been surgically repaired multiple times.
“It was hard because I didn’t want to retire,” Vonn told LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky in a video interview published in October. “When I retired it was because I had to. That summer before that ski season I had three surgeries. I was skiing with two knee braces. I felt like I was being held together by duct tape. So it was time, but it was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. There’s only so much my body can take. My mind can’t push me through everything. At some point, there has to be an end point, and that was it.”
Vonn had additional knee surgeries since retiring, including partial right knee replacement surgery this past April. The knee had developed severe degeneration from injuries during her ski racing career.
“I got to the point where it was too much and my knee could not handle doing the things I love to do,” Vonn posted after the April surgery.
When she resumed skiing 10 weeks after the surgery, Vonn “was startled to be pain-free,” according to the Times.
Over the last seven months, Vonn posted frequently about skiing to her millions of social media followers.
She reflected on her career, which included the first Olympic downhill gold for a U.S. woman, World Cup overall season titles in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012 and 82 individual World Cup race victories from 2004 through 2018. The only Alpine skiers with more wins are Mikaela Shiffrin (97) and retired Swede Ingemar Stenmark (86).
“Whenever you think you’re down and out, keep going!!!” Vonn posted on April 15. “Anything is possible. I know I’ve done it before, and I can do it again… I’ll just be skiing a lot slower this time around 😉.”
Vonn repeatedly posted about returning to skiing this winter, but it was thought that meant recreationally. On Oct. 10, Vonn posted video of herself making turns on skis on World Mental Health Day.
“I am not defined by skiing, I am simply a woman that loves to ski,” she posted. “I know the difference now. I don’t need skiing to make me happy but my love for it will never go away.”
In an early sign of a possible comeback, Vonn was listed as having been drug tested by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in the third quarter of 2024, her first USADA drug test since she retired. Athletes of Vonn’s caliber must re-enter the drug-testing pool before they can return to competition from retirement.
“I’m trying to find something that I’m as passionate about as ski racing, and I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing will replace ski racing,” Vonn told Roslansky. “The adrenaline of ski racing is something I’m trying to find in things that I do.”
Vonn skied in New Zealand and then in Sölden, Austria, days before Sölden hosted the first World Cup race of this season on Oct. 26.
“Because there is no gps for life and nothing is guaranteed but… what IS guaranteed is that I will always live my life to the max,” she posted on her 40th birthday on Oct. 18, along with a clip of her skiing around gates. “I will never have regrets and I will always stay true to myself. So I might as well jump in and get to it!”
It’s too early for Vonn to say whether she’s aiming for a fifth Olympic appearance at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games, where a nation can qualify to enter up to four skiers per event.
“I don’t know what the next few months and the next year and a half hold for me. So I can’t say right now if it’s a possibility,” she said, according to The New York Times, before a pause. “But I think everyone knows how much I love Cortina.”
In May, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation posted a highlight of Vonn breaking the then-record for women’s Alpine World Cup wins at a race in Cortina in 2016.
Vonn also recorded her first World Cup podium result in Cortina in 2004 — “That was the first time I felt like I really belonged on the World Cup,” she later said — then won 12 races at the venue over her career.
“Cortina,È come la mia seconda casa,” Vonn replied to the ski federation’s post.
Translation: Cortina, it’s like my second home.
