Ski icon Lindsey Vonn says post-crash surgery saved her leg from amputation

LOS ANGELES – US ski great Lindsey Vonn revealed on Feb 23 that she nearly had her left leg amputated following a

crash during the women’s downhill at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics,

but is now out of hospital and hoping to progress from a wheelchair to crutches in a few weeks.

The 41-year-old said in an Instagram post that the horrific crash she suffered 13 seconds into one of the most hotly anticipated races at the Games led to compartment syndrome, where excessive trauma to one area of the body builds up inside a group of muscles and the resulting pressure restricts blood flow.

Vonn, the 2010 Olympic champion and second-most successful female World Cup skier of all time, credited Team USA’s Dr Tom Hackett for saving her leg. She said Dr Hackett was in Cortina only because she was competing shortly after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee.

“He saved my leg from being amputated,” Vonn said in a video, adding that she broke her tibia, fibular head and tibial plateau.

“He did what’s called a fasciotomy, where he cut open both sides of my leg, kind of filleted it open, so to speak, let it breathe. And he saved me.”

Skiing with a brace on her left knee, Vonn clipped a gate with her shoulder before losing control and being launched in the air.

She then barrelled off the course at high speed before landing in a crumpled heap. Vonn could be heard screaming on the TV broadcast as fans and teammates gasped in horror.

She had four operations at an Italian hospital following her crash and returned to the US last week, when she had a six-hour surgery.

“It has been quite the journey and by far the most extreme and painful and challenging injury I’ve ever faced in my entire life, times 100,” Vonn added. “It was definitely not the way I wanted to end my Olympics.”

Vonn, who also broke her right ankle in the crash, said it will take around a year for all of the bones to heal and then she will decide if she wants to go back into surgery and finally fix her ACL.

In related news, about 23.5 million people tuned in to watch daily coverage of these Winter Olympics on Comcast’s NBC network and other company outlets such as Peacock, the most in 12 years and almost double the number in 2022.

The total was based on NBC’s afternoon and evening sessions, according to a statement. The audience was the largest for a Winter Games since Sochi in 2014 and up 96 per cent from the 2022 Beijing Olympics. REUTERS, BLOOMBERG