PAINFUL

Skiing Legend Lindsey Vonn Needed Second Surgery After Horrific Leg Injury

She made an audacious bid for gold despite rupturing her ACL just days earlier.

U.S. ski star Lindsey Vonn underwent two operations on her leg after taking a brutal fall just 13 seconds into her Olympic comeback bid, Reuters reports. She suffered a “serious fracture” after clipping a gate during the Milan Cortina Games’ downhill final in her astonishing quest to become the oldest Alpine skiing medalist ever. The three-time Olympic medalist had been racing the revered Olympia delle Tofane on Sunday as part of her comeback after eight years out of the Games, but now it seems her journey in skiing’s most prestigious competition could be over. The 41-year-old was airlifted from Cortina d’Ampezzo to Ca’ Foncello Hospital in Treviso, where the procedures were carried out in the hope of preventing any complications, according to the newswire. Vonn was operated on by local orthopaedic and plastic surgeons with her personal doctor present, although they took a back seat during the procedure, a source told Reuters. Her ACL rupture came just nine days before the Games began, during a World Cup downhill event, but she opted to compete anyway.