THIS IS WHERE she figured it out. Twenty-one years ago, Lindsey Vonn, then 19, earned her first of 137 World Cup podiums in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and started to believe she could win. By the time she retired in 2019, she’d earned 82 World Cup victories, the third most by an alpine skier in history.
Now, improbably, the three-time Olympic medalist returns to race this weekend in Cortina, the site of so much success in her career and, in a little over a year, home to the 2026 Winter Olympics.
“In Cortina, it’s when everything clicked,” Vonn, 40, says of that 2004 race. “Before that, my skiing had been mediocre at best. Then I just figured it out. I figured out the hill. I figured out how to prepare. I haven’t changed much of my preparation since that first podium.”
It’s Thursday night, just two months since she announced her surprise return to the U.S. Ski Team after a partial right knee replacement. During this afternoon’s downhill training — her first in Cortina in six years — Vonn crashed near the bottom of the course and slid into the fence. “I caught a lot of air off the second-to-last jump, and when I landed my ski caught funny and caused me to lose my balance,” she says. “It wasn’t overly dramatic. I’m a little bit bruised, but I’m good.”
Vonn says she didn’t need medical attention, as was widely reported, and if anything, views the experience as a necessary evil. She got her first “real crash” out of the way since coming back to ski racing.
“When you’re going 80 miles an hour, things happen,” she says. “It feels good to be able to hit the fence and stand back up and do another one tomorrow.”
Vonn will contest both the downhill and super-G in Cortina on Saturday and Sunday, just as she did last weekend in St. Anton, Austria. There, worried about her Los Angeles home and her sister and friends amid raging wildfires, Vonn surprised even herself with sixth- and fourth-place finishes in the downhill and super-G in just the second World Cup event of her return. But she insists she’s not placing expectations on herself this time around, even in a place that holds such magic for her like Cortina. This time, she’s approaching ski racing differently.
“When I was racing before, my expectation was to win every time and nothing outside of that was good enough,” she says. “Now, I don’t feel that way at all. It would be amazing if I could continue to improve on my last two results in St. Anton. But I’m realistic. I’m still not 100 percent, so I just need to execute and ski the way I know I can. If I can do that, then I know I can be fast.”
IN THE 15 YEARS between Vonn’s first and final races in Cortina, she won here 12 times, more than any ski racer in history. In 2015, she won both the downhill and super-G — the 62nd and 63rd wins of her career — and broke a 35-year-old record for the most World Cup wins by a woman in alpine skiing. (American skier Mikaela Shiffrin eclipsed Vonn’s record in 2023.)
But despite her illustrious history here, Vonn is more like her 19-year-old self these days. She’s not certain she’s ready to win, and she’s still figuring it all out. She insists Cortina is not a litmus test.
“Me now is a lot more free and a lot less inhibited by stress than I was before,” Vonn says. “I don’t feel the weight of expectation. I feel very light.”
That weightlessness has a lot to do with the perspective she gained away from ski racing. “When you live it every single day, it can wear you down,” she says. “You’re on the road; you’re living out of a suitcase. And my suitcase the last several years — it’s just a carry-on. Now I’m back to eight bags, but it doesn’t feel as heavy as it used to.
“I’m 40. I’ve been retired for six years. I’ve experienced a lot. I think that gives me a lot of power and wisdom and a completely different perspective than anyone else on the World Cup.”
Vonn also says she feels better physically than she has in more than a decade, and because of that, is a better ski racer than she was when she retired in 2019. At the time, she’d undergone multiple surgeries on both of her knees, starting with an ACL repair on her right knee in 2013, and was pushing through constant pain. Vonn’s heart had carried her through her final few seasons when her legs simply could not.
“I was being held together by my knee braces,” Vonn says. “It’s a miracle I got on the podium in my last race.”
She knew her heart had years left. But her body was done.
After she retired, Vonn challenged herself in spaces where she wasn’t the best in the world. She tried car racing, wrote a book and skied for fun. But the pain persisted. Then, in April 2024, after months of research, she made the risky decision to undergo a partial knee replacement in the hopes of living an active, pain-free life. A month later, she was straightening her right leg and doing exercises she hadn’t done in years.
“Now I have two good legs. I have a second chance,” Vonn says. “You don’t really know what you have until it’s gone. I missed ski racing. And not just the racing, but my team and the atmosphere and my competitors and friends and coaches. I don’t take any of that for granted.”
Hers is a rare opportunity, a chance to essentially turn back the clock, and Vonn knows how unlikely a gift this is. She also knows why she’s here and what she wants to get out of this experience.
“I’m doing this for myself,” she says. “I love the fact that I’m out here and I know what I’m capable of.”
Six years ago, Vonn thought ski racing was in her rearview. Now, she has the opportunity to show what she’s capable of — and maybe end this bonus chapter of her career by competing in her fourth Olympics — back in the place where she first figured it out.
“I think this allows people to dream bigger,” she says. “Especially women. We’re put in a box that we need to be doing ‘this’ by a certain time. And that’s not true. We are capable of so much more.”
