ST. MORITZ, Switzerland — Lindsey Vonn didn’t just pop into the hospital one day, get a new titanium knee and then decide on the way out that she wanted to return to downhill ski racing.
It’s been a long, calculated process involving several minor and some major knee surgeries, careful vetting of the medical issues involved and then months of on-snow testing in New Zealand, Austria and Colorado to see how her body and new knee would react at age 40.
So now that she’s preparing to step into a World Cup starting gate this weekend for the first time in nearly six years for super-G races in St. Moritz on Saturday and Sunday, she’s getting fed up with how several of her fellow skiing champions are questioning why she would return to the sport’s most dangerous disciplines at such an advanced age.
“I’ve been thinking about getting a replacement for several years. I did a lot of research. I know people think that I’m insane. But I am actually kind of smart. I have done a few operations, so I know a few doctors. I talked to a lot of them,” Vonn said. “I talked to (extreme skier) Chris Davenport, who also had a partial knee replacement and he skis like 150 days a year. … So that gave me a lot of confidence.”
Vonn got most of her medical advice from Tom Hackett, an orthopedic surgeon at The Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado, who has operated on her knees and arm and is affiliated with the U.S. Ski Team.
“He’s sort of been my guide. He helped me interview doctors from around the world to make sure that they were in it for the right reasons,” Vonn said. “A lot of doctors said they could fix me and make me better. But generally when you say that right off the bat it’s probably not true.”
Hackett helped Vonn find Martin Roche, a South Florida-based orthopedist specializing in complex knee disorders.
Hackett already had performed a “preparation” surgery in July 2023 to try to slow down the need for a replacement while also preparing other parts of Vonn’s knee for an eventual replacement.
Then, in April, Roche performed a robot-assisted replacement, cutting off part of the bone in Vonn’s knee and replacing it with two titanium pieces.
“Once you commit to something you got to commit,” Vonn said. “Once they’re cutting you open that is what it is. So I did all the front-end research and now I’m reaping the rewards on the back end.”
But Vonn, who won a record 43 World Cup downhills before retiring in 2019, has not exactly been given a warm welcome back by some well-known retired skiers.
Two-time Olympic champion Michaela Dorfmeister suggested that “Vonn should see a psychologist,” adding on Austrian TV, “Does she want to kill herself?”
Austrian downhill great Franz Klammer said “she’s gone completely mad.”
Four-time overall World Cup champion Pirmin Zurbriggen added his name to the doubters when he told Swiss tabloid Blick on Wednesday that “there is a risk that Vonn will tear her artificial knee to pieces. And in such a way that she will never be able to do any sport properly for the rest of her life.”
“I have the feeling that Vonn hasn’t recognized the meaning and purpose of her other life in recent years,” Zurbriggen added. “She has probably suffered from no longer being a celebrated champion.”
After Zurbriggen’s comments were published, Vonn hit back on social media.
“I’m getting pretty tired of people predicting negative things about my future,” she wrote Wednesday on X. “Did they all become doctors and I missed it, because they talk like they know more than the best doctors in the world.”
No woman older than 34 has won a World Cup race. But several men have performed well in the sport near or after 40.
Johan Clarey set the record for the oldest podium finisher with a second-place result in the famed Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbuehel, Austria, at age 42 in January 2023.
“I’m not the first person to do it; I’m just maybe the first woman to do it in ski racing. Simone Biles is the perfect example of what can be done at an older age – and she’s not even old,” Vonn said of the gymnast who became the oldest woman to win the all-around Olympic title in nearly 75 years at the Paris Games this year – at 27.
“It’s just outside of the confines of what we believe is the right age for the sport,” Vonn said. “I don’t think I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m just doing what I feel is right for me but at the same time continuing on what other women have done before me.”
