A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Millions were watching as Lindsey Vonn had the worst crash of her career on the Olympic stage this winter. While some might want to lay low after a setback like that, America's most famous downhill skier has never been one to back down. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan sat down with Vonn to hear what was going through her head.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: I met Lindsey Vonn at a hotel in New York last week. She was fully TV ready, makeup and hair, nice outfit. The gray crutches, though, were hard to miss.
LINDSEY VONN: I'm not going to be cruising around Central Park anytime soon. But at least I'm, you know, kind of in some way out and about.
SULLIVAN: Seeing her now, it's hard to believe that a few months ago, she was in arguably the best shape of her life.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: Lindsey Vonn now is absolutely flying.
SULLIVAN: Vonn was the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill gold, the biggest star in skiing. But she retired in 2019. So to stage a comeback last winter at 41 after a knee replacement, it seemed impossible, yet here she was.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: Oldest winner of the World Cup race. Vonn is there. Unbelievable. Incredible. Sensational.
VONN: You know, my age didn't mean that I had somehow lost the ability to ski fast, you know? And that was just a really nice feeling. It felt good to be back on top again.
SULLIVAN: She won her first race in December, then another, but her goal was always the Olympics. The women's events this year were in Cortina d'Ampezzo, an iconic stop on the World Cup circuit where Vonn had won a dozen times in her career. But just over a week before the Olympics, disaster struck. At a race in Switzerland, Vonn spun out of control off a jump and tore a ligament in her knee.
VONN: When they told me I tore my ACL, I was shocked. But also, like, I didn't miss a beat. I didn't come all this way to just, you know, stop trying.
SULLIVAN: For those next nine days, she got back to work. Her leg soon felt stable. It felt strong. Meanwhile, the outside world had started to doubt her once again.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: This whole Lindsey Vonn situation feels like a publicity stunt.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The elephant in the room is she's 41.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: I think this is a monumentally difficult and also dangerous task for her to try to do.
SULLIVAN: And I feel like it was like the biggest question in sports media those nine days was, like, will she do it? Should she do it? Is it smart? Is it crazy? Is it doable? Is it possible, you know?
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SULLIVAN: All the above.
Cut to Cortina. It was a beautiful sunny day the morning of the Olympic downhill race. I was standing at the finish line. All of us reporters, athletes, TV announcers and a grandstand full of fans held our breath as Vonn stepped into the start house. Then, 13 seconds into her run, everything went wrong.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #2: Oh, no.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR #1: Oh, no. Vonn is gone.
SULLIVAN: She hooked a gate with her right arm, which spun her body around into the air. She hit the snow and tumbled down the slope. When she finally came to a stop, she couldn't move. She was in terrible pain. She acknowledges now that the torn ACL did play a role in what happened.
VONN: Because of my ACL, I couldn't rely on certain aspects of my skiing that I normally would. And so I was trying to make a calculated plan on where I could make up time. And that second, third gate was a place that I knew I could ski better.
SULLIVAN: But missing the mark by a few inches was all it took to end her Olympic dream. We all watched stunned as a helicopter carried her off the mountain.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: We love you, Lindsey. Heal strong. You will be missed.
SULLIVAN: Like all ski racers, Lindsey Vonn is no stranger to injury. But this was the most extreme she's ever faced. She had a complex fracture in her left leg with dangerous complications that could've led to amputation. And she broke her right ankle, too. She needed multiple emergency surgeries in the Italian ICU before she could be flown home to the U.S.
VONN: The pain was almost unbearable. But I felt like there are mental low points that were much worse. The amount of time in a wheelchair and just being unable to do really anything without someone taking care of me. I'm a very independent person, and I don't want to burden anybody, and I felt like I was a constant burden.
SULLIVAN: It's normal for anyone, even elite athletes, to go quiet when they experience a severe injury to recover in private. Lindsey Vonn, though, has never been normal. Starting that week in the hospital in Italy, she decided to broadcast her ordeal on social media.
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VONN: Hey, guys. Just wanted to give you a little update.
SULLIVAN: There were the selfies in her Italian hospital bed. The montage of her medevac flight back to the U.S., of her six-hour surgery in Colorado, the X-rays, the PT, a new motorized scooter.
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VONN: Woo.
SULLIVAN: And in all of it, she wasn't shy about showing her busted leg, sometimes with bandages or a sock hiding the long, healing scars. But not always.
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VONN: Life is life, and we have to take the punches as they come. So I'm going to do the best I can with this one. It really knocked me down. But I'm like Rocky. I'll just keep getting back up.
SULLIVAN: I found it striking how public she's been about it all. She told me she needed it, actually, because she felt so isolated.
VONN: I thought it was some of, like, the most introspective thought and, like, posting that I've ever done. And I thought it was actually - it was really therapeutic for me because I felt like I had so many emotions that I wanted to tell people. And it was really the only way for me to do that.
SULLIVAN: Now she's dipping her toe back into the real world. First, a photo shoot for Vanity Fair.
VONN: I'd been in sweatpants with no makeup for so long. And I finally felt, like, more feminine. And, you know, I'm like, OK, I'm still here.
SULLIVAN: Then came this trip to New York for an educational campaign called Antibodies for Any Body for the pharma company Invivyd. She signed that deal before her crash. But she says she never seriously considered backing out. In fact, Vonn says she has no regrets at all.
VONN: My crashes, my obstacles, everything that I face in my life has always made me a better person and led me down a different path that, you know, I wouldn't be where I am right now without it. Despite everything, I'm still really happy with my life.
SULLIVAN: She does still have a long way to go, about 1 million more hours of rehab, plus another surgery this fall then another to finally address that torn ACL. Yet she won't rule out return to the ski slope. One day, if only to get some closure.
VONN: I never got even a chance to say goodbye to anyone. I saw my teammates in the start, and then I was whisked away in a chopper, and I never saw anyone again. Not even for racing, but just as, like, a human being to say, you know, this was fun. I love you guys.
SULLIVAN: That might take her a little while. But as she says, she's not one to hide her story. So she jokes we'll probably hear about it on Instagram.
Becky Sullivan, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRAKE SONG, "GOD'S PLAN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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