Lindsey Vonn is recovering at home after a five-hour operation that removed the last of the metal plates and screws from her left leg and reconstructed her ACL.
In an Instagram post, the 42-year-old Olympic champion wrote that the surgery “went well” and shared a photo of the hardware doctors extracted. “Got all this shit out of my leg,” she said, adding that she is “thankful to be on the final road to a full recovery.”
She thanked Dr. Tom Hackett, Dr. Randy Viola, Lindsay Winninger, the Stifel U.S. Ski Team, medical staff, and her loved ones.
The procedure was Vonn’s ninth since she crashed 13 seconds into the women’s downhill at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics on February 8. She had torn her left ACL about nine days earlier in a World Cup race at Crans-Montana but raced anyway. The fall caused a complex tibia fracture and other injuries that led to compartment syndrome, nearly costing her the leg. An emergency fasciotomy by Dr. Hackett saved it.
Surgeons had waited for the bones to heal before removing the stabilizing plates and screws and finally rebuilding the ACL. With the hardware now gone, Vonn faces a typical six- to nine-month recovery. The four-time World Cup overall champion and 2010 Olympic downhill gold medalist has not ruled out a return to the slopes but has left her competitive future open.
