Eight months after a crash at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics nearly cost her a leg, Lindsey Vonn is heading back into the operating room. The 42-year-old American ski legend is scheduled for surgery on November 9 to remove the plates and screws from her left leg and finally repair the ACL she ruptured days before the Olympic downhill. If all goes to plan, she says, it should be her last operation.

The backdrop to all this is brutal. Vonn tore the ACL in her left knee just days before the Olympic downhill in February but started the race anyway. Thirteen seconds in, at the Tofane Alpine Skiing centre, she clipped a gate and was thrown off line, tumbling through the air before hitting the icy piste. She was airlifted to hospital with complex fractures of both bones in her lower left leg. Surgeons inserted three plates and as many as 20 screws, but the knee ligament had to wait until the bone healed.

It got worse before it got better. In the weeks after that first surgery, Vonn developed acute compartment syndrome — a dangerous buildup of pressure around muscle that can kill tissue and threaten the limb. She needed an emergency fasciotomy, performed by Colorado surgeon Dr Tomas Hackett, to save the leg from amputation.

Recovery is still a long road. Vonn expects about four weeks on crutches and at least six months of rehab after this procedure. In the meantime she has found small wins off the snow — recently hydrofoil sailing, which she described as a step closer to skiing again. Whatever happens next, her place in the sport is secure: in 2010 she became the first American woman to win Olympic downhill gold, and her record of comebacks is already one of the best in ski history.

For skiers, there is a place worth remembering in this story too. Cortina d'Ampezzo, in Italy's Dolomites, is where the Tofane course sits — one of the most storied and demanding downhill venues in the Alps, and a proper ski holiday destination in its own right. The crash is a reminder of how unforgiving Olympic-speed terrain can be, even for the most decorated downhill racer of her generation.

Whether Vonn races again or pivots to life beyond competition, her refusal to step away — nine surgeries and counting — is why she remains the sport's most watched comeback story. Travel fans with an eye on the Dolomites will find the region rewarding long after the Olympic spotlight moves on: dramatic passes, lift-linked ski circuits and a charming pedestrianised town centre at its heart.