Lindsey Vonn and the True Meaning of Athletic Resilience

Photograph by Julian Finney / Getty

Lindsey Vonn is one of the greatest winter athletes of all time. She was on an amazing six-year comeback after having a partial total knee on the right knee. She was in great form. She had been the circuit’s leading downhiller this season with two victories and three podiums. Unfortunately, she suffered a fall during the last World Cup event and tore her ACL in her left knee. She reassessed her situation with her team and decided to compete in the Olympics that would start one week later. I have received many texts about this situation that ranged from amazement to criticizing to questioning if it was real. Here is my statement as an orthopedic sports medicine physician and athlete.

Lindsey Vonn is one of the most gritty, courageous, driven athletes of our generation. She has trained, raced, won, and failed with incredible success during her career. She has surrounded herself with family, coaches, and a medical team that support her passion. She was on an incredible comeback at the age of 41 from a partial total knee. She now had an ACL tear that was a significant setback. She and her team decided to race. Physicians, therapists, and skiers have no right to question this decision. We have no idea the pain, the work, and the grind she endured during her career. We have no idea what the incredible Lindsey Vonn can do. Very few can fathom the grit, drive, and determination that are portrayed as her winner’s mindset. I personally cannot imagine the courage she showed standing at the top of that steep downhill course with her Olympic dream, knowing she had just torn her ACL. She did fall during her first run.

Thank you, Lindsey, for showing us incredible courage, drive, and determination that make a winner’s mindset. Congratulations to Breezy Johnson for the gold medal win. Four years ago on this mountain, she tore her ACL and was knocked out of the Beijing Olympics — another example of courage, fortitude, and grit.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
~ Theodore Roosevelt

I have the greatest respect for these athletes. Don’t be critical of what you don’t understand or can’t physically or mentally comprehend.