9th surgery since Cortina: Lindsey Vonn's ACL rebuild on 9 November
Lindsey Vonn at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics. Photo: U.S. Mission Korea via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Lindsey Vonn goes into her ninth operation since her Olympic crash on Monday 9 November 2026. Surgeons will take the plates and screws out of her left leg and rebuild the ACL she tore in January. She expects six to nine months of recovery and says she has not decided whether she will race again.
In short
- Surgery date: Monday 9 November 2026, the ninth operation since the crash of 8 February 2026.
- The plan: remove all hardware from the left leg and reconstruct the torn anterior cruciate ligament.
- Recovery: about four weeks on crutches and six to nine months in total, according to Vonn.
- Racing: no decision yet; she calls her career "unfinished" and is still on the U.S. team.
- Four outlets published interviews with her between 3 and 6 November 2026: Forbes, PEOPLE, Parade and The Athletic.
What happens on Monday 9 November
Vonn spoke about the operation in four separate interviews in the first week of November. To PEOPLE, on the red carpet of the CFDA Fashion Awards on Monday 2 November, she said: "This hopefully will be my last surgery, this will be my ninth surgery, and I'm looking forward to moving past this."
She told Forbes on 3 November that the plan is to remove all of the hardware and finally fix the ACL. According to The Athletic, three titanium plates and many screws have held her leg together for seven months while the bones healed.
The Athletic also names the surgeons, Tom Hackett and Randy Viola, and the place, the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado. The graft is not fixed yet: if her damaged patellar tendon has healed, part of it becomes the new ACL; if not, the surgeons will use part of her quadriceps tendon. "We won't know everything until we get in there," Vonn told The Athletic.
Eight operations since 8 February
The count starts at the Olympic women's downhill in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Sunday 8 February 2026. The Associated Press reported that Vonn clipped a gate with her right shoulder about 13 seconds into her run and was flown off the course by helicopter. She had a complex fracture of the left tibia and also broke her right ankle.
Dr Tom Hackett did a fasciotomy that Vonn credits with saving her leg from amputation. By 30 April 2026 she had had eight operations, according to an AP interview. Monday's surgery is therefore the ninth since the crash.
The ACL is an older injury. Vonn ruptured it in a World Cup downhill in Crans-Montana on Friday 30 January 2026, nine days before the Olympic race, and raced in Cortina with the torn ligament. AP reported that the torn ligament played no role in the crash.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Fri 30 Jan 2026 | Left ACL ruptured, World Cup downhill, Crans-Montana |
| Sun 8 Feb 2026 | Crash in the Olympic downhill, Cortina d'Ampezzo |
| By Thu 30 Apr 2026 | Eight operations on the left leg and right ankle |
| Tue 3 – Fri 6 Nov 2026 | Interviews published by Forbes, PEOPLE, Parade, The Athletic |
| Mon 9 Nov 2026 | Ninth operation: hardware out, new ACL |
Recovery: crutches first, then months of rehab
Vonn expects about four weeks on crutches after Monday, and then a recovery of six to nine months in total. The Athletic gives the same six-to-nine-month range. In April she had already told AP that a fixed ACL would add "another six months" to her timeline.
The first speed races of the new World Cup season are in Beaver Creek in December 2026. Her own timeline of at least six months rules out a start there.
Will she race again?
Vonn has not decided. She told Parade that she has not retired and is still on the U.S. Alpine Ski Team roster: "I do feel that things are unfinished with my career."
In The Athletic interview she named both outcomes. After the surgery she wants to see whether she physically and mentally wants to keep racing, or whether she will ski only for fun. She was 41 when she returned to the World Cup after six years away and reached the top of the downhill rankings again.
Her comeback skis: HEAD race models
In her comeback seasons Vonn raced for HEAD. The maker's own press release of 12 December 2025 on her St. Moritz win calls her a "HEAD team colleague" and counts it as her 83rd World Cup victory. Her race skis are not for sale, and no source names the model she used.
HEAD sells race-inspired skis to the public under the Worldcup Rebels and Supershape names. These three speed models are in our catalog, with the maker's figures:
| Ski | Waist | Radius | Lengths |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worldcup Rebels e-Speed Pro | 65 mm | 18.1–21.7 m | 170–185 cm |
| Worldcup Rebels e-Speed | 68 mm | 15.1–19.4 m | 165–185 cm |
| Supershape e-Speed | 68 mm | 11.5–16.6 m | 156–184 cm |
The e-Speed Pro is a long-radius ski on a race plate for expert skiers who want stability at speed. The Supershape e-Speed has a shorter radius and suits fast carving on groomed pistes. To compare these skis with other brands for your height, weight and level, use Pick-A-Ski.
Sources
- PEOPLE, interview at the CFDA Fashion Awards, 4 November 2026
- Forbes (Bruce Lee), interview, 3 November 2026
- Parade, interview, 5 November 2026
- The Athletic, interview, published on 6 November 2026
- Associated Press, crash report of 8 February 2026 and interview of 30 April 2026
- HEAD, press release, 12 December 2025
