What you need to know
Lindsey Vonn’s teammate Breezy Johnson has defended the 41-year-old’s decision to compete in the Olympics despite a torn ACL.
After Vonn announced on Tuesday that she would compete in the downhill event at the 2026 Winter Games despite tore her anterior cruciate ligament “completely” a week earlier in a World Cup race, some fans questioned whether she should have withdrawn.
When one person asked Vonn why she had “no backups” and said, “There’s no way she could be elite with a compromise like that,” fellow alpine skier Johnson, 30, responded on social media by defending her teammate.
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“There will be six Americans participating in the downhill training run, but if Lindsey is unable to compete or does not feel competitive enough, another athlete can take her place,” Johnson wrote in a reply to the thread.
Johnson added, “But more athletes than you think are competing without an ACL. They just often don’t talk about it because they don’t want to hear about it from the peanut gallery.”
Fans appreciated Johnson’s explanation in defense of the gold medalist. One user wrote: “Thank you for vindicating him! I tried to defend her choice to others but there are too many know-it-all experts out there.”
Vonn tore her anterior cruciate ligament on Friday, January 30, when she crashed in poor visibility during a downhill race in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. “This is a very difficult result a week before the Olympics… but if there’s one way I can do it, it’s to come back,” she said after the injury, adding: “The Olympic dream is not over.”
A few days after her injury, Vonn announced that she would still compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics, telling reporters, “I think I can still compete, and I will do my best to get to the starting gate.”
“It hurt at first after the accident,” she said. “I felt it wasn’t good, but I held out hope until the MRI was in front of me. But I never cried and I never deviated from my plan.”
Vonn will compete in a downhill event in Cortina on Sunday, February 8th. The five-time Olympian said she will decide whether she will also compete in the next super-G event on Feb. 12.
