{"id":299061,"date":"2026-02-24T02:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T02:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/299061\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T02:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T02:54:11","slug":"lindsey-vonn-says-winter-olympics-injury-could-have-led-to-amputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/299061\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindsey Vonn says Winter Olympics injury could have led to amputation"},"content":{"rendered":"

She said, the injury had caused \u201ccompartment syndrome\u201d, which put her leg at risk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there\u2019s too much blood and it gets stuck and it basically crushes everything,\u201d Vonn said in her post. \u201cMuscle, nerves and tendons all die …<\/p>\n

\u201cHe cut open both sides of my leg, filleted it open. Let it breathe, and he saved me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2010 Olympic downhill champion came out of retirement last winter after almost six years away and had found impressive World Cup form this season with seven podium finishes in eight races, including two victories.<\/p>\n

A fall in January then left her with a damaged ligament in her left knee, but she still went to the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been really hard and not the way I wanted to end the Olympics,\u201d she said, with tears in her eyes. \u201cBut it\u2019s been inspiring to watch my team-mates.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo regrets. I worked so hard to get back and this year was so worth it. It was one blip on the radar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the hospital a little longer than I hoped, because I had low haemoglobin from all the blood loss and I was really struggling with the pain, which was a little out of control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how painful it\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vonn, who has 84 World Cup race victories in her career, had been hoping to win her fourth Olympic medal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m finally well enough to move to a hotel. It\u2019s not home yet, but it\u2019s a huge step!\u201d she wrote, but also added that she could not yet walk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be a long road. I\u2019m in a wheelchair right now because I also broke my right ankle.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I will focus on rehab and progressing from a wheelchair to crutches in a few weeks. It will take around a year for all of the bones to heal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said, the injury had caused \u201ccompartment syndrome\u201d, which put her leg at risk. \u201cWhen you have so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8239,21644,118962,124,7061,33236,3592,305,31144,15258,18557,26981,116293,111,139,69,25292,5106,17162,312,213,2737,31145,47103,61,116294,23644],"class_list":{"0":"post-299061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-american","9":"tag-amputation","10":"tag-cortina","11":"tag-could","12":"tag-doctor","13":"tag-downhill","14":"tag-fall","15":"tag-have","16":"tag-horrific","17":"tag-injury","18":"tag-led","19":"tag-leg","20":"tag-lindsey","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-olympic","25":"tag-olympics","26":"tag-saved","27":"tag-says","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-star","30":"tag-suffered","31":"tag-thanked","32":"tag-to","33":"tag-vonn","34":"tag-winter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}