U.S. skiing star Lindsey Vonn had another surgery on her badly broken left leg Friday and remained hospitalized nearly two weeks after her terrifying crash in the women’s downhill race at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Vonn flew home to the United States last weekend after a week of treatment for a complex tibia fracture and at least four surgeries at a hospital in Italy.
“Made it through surgery,” Vonn wrote in her latest post on Instagram. “It took a bit more than 6 hours to complete. As you can see, it required a lot of plates and screws to put back together.
“With the extent of the trauma, I’ve been struggling a bit post op and have not yet been able to be discharged from the hospital just yet,” Vonn added. “Almost there. Baby steps.”
And in another social media post on her X account, next to an X-ray showing metal screws and other hardware inside her leg, Vonn wrote: “I’m bionic for real now.”
Vonn was attempting to win a fourth Olympic medal, this one at age 41 with a torn ACL in her left knee and a partial titanium replacement in her right knee. She got hooked on a gate 13 seconds into her downhill run, though, resulting in a spinning, airborne crash that sent her careening down the mountain in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Because her skis did not release during the crash, the fall has raised safety concerns on the skiing circuit.