With surgery just 17 days away, Lindsey Vonn is grinding high-rep endurance work and carefully reintroducing jumps so she has something left when post-op atrophy hits.
The Olympic legend, who nearly lost her left leg after a crash just 13 seconds into the Milano Cortina downhill in February, is now deep in the final stretch of pre-op preparation for the ACL reconstruction she has long targeted for November. In a recent update she described the current phase simply but pointedly:
“Pre-surgery prep…. Focusing on high reps, getting muscle endurance and building mass. I’m also easing my way into jumps both static, lateral and some stop-and-go absorption. Pretty basic but the results are adding up. Hoping to be as strong as possible so when my leg atrophies post surgery i might still have some muscle left.
2 1/2 weeks to go!”
The approach is classic Vonn: practical, progressive, and grounded in the reality of what comes next. After months of rehab that included crutches, limited weight-bearing, hyperbaric sessions, and the long process of restoring basic function following a complex tibia fracture, compartment syndrome, and multiple procedures, she is deliberately stacking muscle and endurance now. The goal is not peak power for racing but a buffer—extra mass and work capacity that can survive the expected shutdown and atrophy once she is under the knife and immobilized again.
Vonn has been open about the timeline. She tore the ACL in a World Cup race days before the Olympics, raced anyway, crashed, and has spent the intervening months surviving and then rebuilding. Doctors have indicated the ACL repair would come after the bones had healed sufficiently; she has said she hopes to have the procedure in November, after which she expects roughly nine more months of rehabilitation. That puts any potential return well into the future and rules out the coming World Cup season.
For now the work is deliberately basic: high-volume endurance, mass-building, and controlled reintroduction of jump variations (static, lateral, and absorption drills). The jumps are not aggressive training but a careful step back into the absorption and reaction patterns she will eventually need. She has called the results encouraging even while describing the work as straightforward.
The update fits the pattern of a career defined by repeated setbacks and methodical returns. After a long retirement and a partial knee replacement, Vonn came back, added significant muscle, and was leading the World Cup downhill standings when she arrived in Cortina. The crash changed the immediate equation, but the mindset has not. She is treating the next two-and-a-half weeks as the last clean window to bank strength before the next forced pause.
Whether that strength is enough to support another competitive chapter remains open. Vonn has not closed the door on racing again, and she remains on the U.S. team roster while recovery continues. In the short term, though, the mission is narrower and more immediate: arrive at surgery as strong as possible so that, when the leg shrinks afterward, something is still there to build from.
