Lindsey Vonn Reveals Her Leg Was Almost Amputated After Tragic Ski Crash During the Olympics: 'Pain Was Out of Control'

Lindsey Vonn nearly became an amputee after her shocking crash during the 2026 Winter Olympics.

In a Monday, February 23, Instagram video, the ski racer, 41, gave an update on her health and detailed the specific injuries she endured.

“After two weeks, I finally made it out of the hospital. 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,” she began in the Instagram Reel.

Vonn — who competed in the Olympics with a torn ACL — developed a complex tibia fracture and shattered her fibular head and tibial plateau following the crash.

“Everything was in pieces,” she recalled. “The reason why it was so complex is because I had compartment syndrome…when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there’s too much blood, and it gets stuck, and it basically crushes everything in the compartment. All the muscles and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies.”

Vonn credited Dr. Tom Hackett for “saving [her] life from being amputated.” The medical professional performed a fasciotomy, which involved cutting open both sides of the leg to relieve pressure in the muscle compartments caused by her compartment syndrome.

“I always talk about how everything happens for a reason, but if I hadn’t torn my ACL, which I would’ve torn anyways with this crash…Tom wouldn’t have been there. He wouldn’t have been able to save my leg,” she said. “I feel very lucky and grateful for him, for this six-hour surgery he put in on Wednesday to rebuild it, which went amazingly well.”

The skier admitted she was in the hospital longer than she had hoped due to low hemoglobin, which stemmed from blood loss after her surgeries.

“I was struggling. Pain was out of control,” she expressed. “I had a blood transfusion, and that helped me a lot. I turned the corner, and now I am out.”

In the caption of her post, Vonn detailed what next steps look like and how she plans on recovering.

“Now I will focus on rehab and progressing from a wheelchair to crutches in a few weeks,” she wrote. “It will take around a year for all of the bones to heal and then I will decide if I want to take out all the metal or not, and then go back into surgery and finally fix my ACL. It will be a long road but I’ll get there. At least I’m out of the hospital 🙌🏻💪🏻.”