CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn didn’t need to be at her best. She just needed to get down the mountain.
Vonn is now eligible to do the downhill at the Milano Cortina Olympics, having completed her training run without any issues Friday, Feb. 6. She made a small mistake at the bottom of the course and wasn’t going anywhere close to top speed; her time of 1:40.33 was the 11th-fastest of the day and third-best of the Americans.
But Vonn wasn’t favoring her left knee — the one with that torn ACL — and that counts as a win.
‘Just good skiing, no big risk,’ said Aksel Lund Svindal, the two-time Olympic champion who is now Vonn’s coach. ‘And to me it looked symmetrical. I didn’t see any differences right and left. And I think that’s kind of what we’re looking for today.’
There is another training run Saturday before the downhill race on Sunday, Feb. 8. But skiers only need to do one run in order to race, and Svindal said Vonn’s team will make a decision based on how her knee responds whether to do the second training run.
The initial training run, scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 5, was canceled after heavy snow in Cortina.
Vonn has a torn ACL, bone bruising and meniscus damage in her left knee from a Jan. 30 crash in the final downhill race before the Olympics. She has been doing intensive physical therapy since the crash, and posted a video of herself doing squats, lifting weights and jumping on Thursday, Feb. 5.
She is determined to race in Cortina, one of her favorite places, and Svindal said she’s never wavered from that.
‘Let’s just put it this way: She was the first one that said that she would,’ Svindal said. ‘Everyone else was supporting her but (also saying), `Let’s just take this day by day’ — including, let’s say, people with medical experience. So I think we’re all positive.
‘But she’s awesome,’ he added. ‘She was the first one to say that this is happening, I’m racing.’
Vonn had taken confidence from free skiing on Tuesday, Feb. 3. But those were not race-like conditions, and she acknowledged the training runs would be the true test on whether her knee can hold up.
‘As long as I can keep it stable, as long as I have the brace on, as long as I have no swelling, and my muscles are activating appropriately, I should be OK,’ she said earlier in the week. ‘But I can’t guarantee what it’s going to feel like once I get into some of the big turns. That’s what we’ll have to see after the first training runs.’
Vonn was clearly not going at full speed, but most skiers weren’t because of the soft and slushy conditions. Still, Svindal said he was watching for ‘symmetry,’ — her body looking the same on both the right and left sides.
So long as she has that, the speed will come.
‘The training run today was a bit off. Not bad … slower. But I think that’s what she should do. So that was good,’ Svindal said.
Vonn was in great spirits before the training run, posting multiple photos of herself and the rest of the U.S. women as they headed up the mountain and then again from the start area. During an hour-long delay because of dense fog, she and the rest of the Americans killed time by line dancing.
When she finally got on the course, Vonn didn’t back off. Again, she wasn’t at full speed, but she was aggressive in the turns and didn’t slow down before the jumps. She even took a hard landing off the last roller before the finish line.
Breezy Johnson, who’d started one spot in front of Vonn, was waiting in the finish area, and Vonn gave her a triumphant fist bump.
‘Free skiing is one thing, but it’s easy. Everyone can make a perfect turn when you decide when to make the turn,’ Svindal said. ‘When you are squeezed into a downhill course, it’s something very different and I thought it went really well.’
Vonn is a three-time Olympic medalist whose 84 World Cup wins are behind only American teammate Mikaela Shiffrin and Swedish men’s skiing legend Ingemar Stenmark. She was forced to retire in 2019 because of the physical pain from a series of injuries to her right knee.
But after having a partial knee replacement in April 2024, Vonn felt so good she began contemplating a comeback.
“I retired in 2019 because my body said no more, not because I didn’t want to continue racing,” Vonn told USA TODAY Sports in October. “So I feel like this could be an incredible moment to end this chapter of my life and move forward in a really exciting and peaceful way.”
Cortina was a big part of that.
Cortina has always been one of Vonn’s favorite places. She made her first World Cup podium there, winning a bronze medal in the downhill in 2004, and 12 of her 84 World Cup victories came there.
“It’s such a special place for me,” Vonn said in October. “I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina. If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it’s not worth it.
“But for me, there’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back.”
Vonn had mixed results after she returned to the World Cup circuit in 2024, but she finished the season with a silver medal in the super-G at the World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho. After a full off-season to train and fine-tune her equipment, the 41-year-old Vonn was unstoppable.
She won this season’s first downhill, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and another in Zauchensee, Austria. She was on the podium in all five downhill races in the 2025-26 season, and two of the first three super-Gs.
Vonn led the downhill standings, putting her in position to join Mikaela Shiffrin as the only skiers to win nine season titles in a single discipline. She also was second in the super-G standings and sixth in the overall heading into the Olympics.
The possibility of winning another season title even persuaded Vonn to rethink her retirement plans. After last week’s crash, however, Vonn is just trying to get to the starting gate for Sunday’s downhill.
‘That we have a chance,’ Svindal said when asked what he was thinking as he watched Vonn during the training run. ‘Because when she’s that committed, and she knows her body really well from multiple injuries, there is a chance.’