Lindsey Vonn has revealed she came close to having her leg amputated following her crash during the Olympic downhill earlier this month. The 41-year-old American skier sustained a complex tibia fracture to her left leg and underwent multiple surgeries in Italy before being flown back to the US for further treatment.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Vonn said the crash also led to compartment syndrome, a condition where excessive pressure around muscles restricts blood flow, potentially causing permanent damage. “When you have so much trauma to one area of your body so that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck and it basically crushes everything,” she explained.
Vonn credited Dr Tom Hackett, an orthopedic surgeon working with her and Team USA, with saving her leg. “He filleted it open and let it breathe, and he saved me,” she said. Hackett was in Italy monitoring Vonn after she tore her ACL in the run-up to the Olympics, a factor she believes was crucial. “If I hadn’t had done that, Tom wouldn’t have been there [and he] wouldn’t have been able to save my leg,” she added.
Vonn also broke her ankle in the crash and expects a lengthy recovery. “It will take around a year for all of the bones to heal and then I will decide if I want to take out all the metal or not, and then go back into surgery and finally fix my ACL,” she wrote. She is now out of hospital for the first time since the crash, staying in a hotel as she continues to recover.
Despite the ordeal, Vonn expressed no regrets about competing at the Olympics. “I showed up and did what most thought was impossible at my age with a partial knee replacement,” she wrote on Sunday. “These memories I’ll have forever and I’m grateful for every one of them. Every moment was amazing. Every moment was worth it.”
