Lindsey Vonn crash: American skiing icon airlifted away after terrifying fall in Olympics women's downhill

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47. How to watch Lindsey Vonn ski with torn ACL in 2026 Winter Olympics medal events

How to watch Lindsey Vonn ski with torn ACL in 2026 Winter Olympics medal events


Vonn, 41, is competing in her fifth Winter Olympics. Millo Moravski / Getty Images

By The Athletic Staff
Feb. 8, 2026 4:00 am EST

Lindsey Vonn has spent two decades proving the fastest line in downhill skiing is usually the one that looks least survivable on replay. Now, at 41, she is trying to do one of the most audacious things an athlete can do: win with a torn left ACL that has become its own storyline.

How to watch Lindsey Vonn at the Winter Olympics
Venue: Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre — Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Date: Feb. 8-12
TV: NBC, USA Network
Streaming: Peacock, NBCOlympics.com

Be sure to check out The Athletic’s Olympic schedule interactive page and Games Briefing, a daily Olympics newsletter.

The timeline is critical. Downhill is Vonn’s signature, the purest expression of her speed game, and it’s a single-run medal race on Cortina’s Olympia delle Tofane track. No series. No margin. You get one shot, and the mountain does not care how famous you are or how many times you have rebuilt the rest of the machine to keep doing this.

Vonn doesn’t need validation. The Minnesota native already owns the 2010 Olympic downhill gold, three Olympic medals overall and 84 World Cup wins. This is about whether experience, pain tolerance and a practiced willingness to absorb risk can still get her down a course that behaves like an icy “vertical hockey rink” at 70 to 80 mph.

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