Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Lindsey Vonn isn’t sorry about responding to some of her armchair critics after her Winter Olympics crash
- She says she was isolated in a hospital room for two and a half weeks with only her phone to keep her company, so couldn’t help but read the comments
- She notes that there are very few people in the world who could understand the pressure she was under
Lindsey Vonn says she is on the way to getting her life back after the horrific leg injury she sustained during her 2026 Winter Olympics crash. Still, she recalls how isolating it was in the weeks after the Feb. 8 incident, and how her mental health suffered suffered significantly.
“It’s definitely been up and down,” she says of having depression after the accident. “I’d say in the last month, it’s definitely gotten better, but of course there were really low moments. I hate being dependent on people, and was pretty much 100% dependent for everything. It was quite a challenge, just being in the hospital alone for two and a half weeks. Being completely immobile for that extended time period was so rough.”
Vonn, who says she’s now on crutches, was mostly alone with the beeps and blips of the machines — and her phone. Which meant she couldn’t help but read all the things that were being said about her on social media.
“There were a million things that were being said online, that people were so convinced that they knew even though they don’t really have a concept of ski racing, and what it physically takes,” the Olympic gold medalist says. “So I think reading all of that online was hard. Of course, I tried not to read it, but I also didn’t really have any other way of being connected to the outside world, because I was so isolated.”
Vonn, who is currently working on an educational campaign about the magic of antibodies for Invivyd, (Antibodies for Any Body) laughs that she couldn’t help but reply to some of the critics.
“Sometimes I got frustrated and, you know, had a hard time staying away from battling trolls on Twitter,” she says with a laugh. “But sometimes you just gotta stand up for yourself. And I maybe did that a few too many times, but it’s hard.”
She says there are very few people in the world who could relate to what she has gone through as a professional athlete, especially one who has gone through injuries, retirement and then come out of retirement.
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Weeks prior to the crash, the 41-year-old Vonn won a gold medal at the 2026 World Cup, her 84th victory, and then suffered a torn ACL a week before her Winter Olympics return.
“It’s hard to have thick enough skin to not combat everyone that wants to tell you what to do, or how to do it, or tell you that you should have done something differently when there’s maybe five people in the world that even understand the pressure that I was under,” she says.
“Racing without an ACL and, and doing as well as I did, you know, there’s maybe five people in the world who get that. But I try not to put too much weight in all those armchair quarterbacks.”
As for what’s next, Vonn tells PEOPLE it’s time for a little vacation.
“The plane ticket is booked!” she says. “I want to have a good summer, and I need to kind of disconnect from everything. I also feel like in the next six weeks, I’ll be at a point where I can start living normally. I’ll still have to do some exercised, but yeah, I have some stuff planned. And I’m really looking forward to it.”
Read the original article on People
