Lindsey Vonn deemed her first comeback races a success and is already planning the next steps of her return to Alpine skiing competition.
Vonn, who retired in 2019 at age 34 due to the physical toll of accumulated ski racing injuries, decided to come back after feeling pain-free after partial right knee replacement surgery in April.
“All the things that had been bothering me for so many years were suddenly gone,” she said on the Today Show on Tuesday. “I thought, OK, well, if I feel this good playing tennis and doing all the things I love, what about skiing? I feel like this is an adventure. I don’t know where it’s going to lead, but I am so happy to be not in pain anymore, and to do the thing I love most, which is ski.”
Vonn will be a non-competitive forerunner at this weekend’s Stifel Birds of Prey World Cup at Beaver Creek, Colorado, ahead of a targeted comeback to the sport’s highest level this winter.
Forerunners ski the course directly before the start of the competition as a test for the skiers in the official field.
A downhill is scheduled for Saturday and a super-G for Sunday. NBC and Peacock will air highlights on Sunday at 4 p.m. ET.
Last weekend, Vonn raced for the first time in her comeback, placing 19th, 24th, 24th and 27th in lower-level downhills and super-Gs in Copper Mountain, Colorado.
Vonn used those races as a training opportunity and called it a solid start. She qualified to return to the World Cup, the circuit for the top Alpine skiers.
“Now let’s see when I’m ready,” for the World Cup, she posted afterward.
Vonn, 40, can become the second-oldest woman on record to race the Alpine World Cup after former U.S. teammate Sarah Schleper.
Schleper retired in December 2011, then returned in 2014, skiing for Mexico and most recently raced World Cup in January 2022 age 42.
International Ski and Snowboard Federation online records show no other women 40 and older have raced on the Alpine World Cup, though results from the early decades of the World Cup are incomplete.
Vonn can break the records for oldest documented American woman to start a World Cup race (Resi Stiegler, 35), oldest documented woman from any nation to start a World Cup downhill (Austrian Elisabeth Görgl, 36) and oldest documented woman from any nation to score points in a World Cup race by finishing in the top 30 (Görgl, 36).
“I’m really enjoying this journey,” Vonn said. “No one’s ever done this with a knee replacement before, so I honestly don’t know how far I can take it, but so far, it’s been incredible. The response has been incredible. And I can tell you, I am having so much fun going fast again.”
She has not committed to a 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic bid yet.
Vonn recorded her first career World Cup podium result in Cortina in 2004 — “That was the first time I felt like I really belonged on the World Cup,” she later said — then won 12 races at the Italian venue over her career.
“I don’t want to put any expectations,” she said of the 2026 Olympics, “but if I could (go) that would be amazing.”
