At 40, Lindsey Vonn makes her comeback to competitive skiing with a pair of downhill events.

Almost six years post-retirement, American alpine skiing icon Lindsey Vonn reentered the competitive scene on Saturday with a duo of downhill events at Copper Mountain, Colorado. The 40-year-old Vonn placed 24th and 27th among 45 competitors in the FIS Fall Festival races. While this event ranks below the elite World Cup series, it attracted a […]

Almost six years post-retirement, American alpine skiing icon Lindsey Vonn reentered the competitive scene on Saturday with a duo of downhill events at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

The 40-year-old Vonn placed 24th and 27th among 45 competitors in the FIS Fall Festival races. While this event ranks below the elite World Cup series, it attracted a number of prominent skiers preparing for the upcoming World Cup competitions at the same location.

Last month, Vonn revealed her plans to stage a comeback nearly six years after she concluded her career following the World Championships in February 2019 due to a knee injury. After a knee replacement earlier this year, she has been pain-free, inspiring her to consider a return to competition.

She aspires to take part in World Cup races and, if she can overcome the odds and regain a semblance of her previous form, possibly the 2026 Olympics. The women’s alpine skiing events are scheduled to occur in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where Vonn has earned 12 World Cup victories throughout her career.

“I’m trying to avoid looking too far ahead because I have several challenges ahead of me,” Vonn mentioned to the New York Times last month, elaborating that she “can’t currently determine if competing in Cortina is a possibility.”

Saturday marked her initial step back into competition. In an Instagram update on Friday, she referred to this weekend’s races as a “training chance to continue progressing” and expressed, “100% will come in time, but not tomorrow.”

In her first run, Vonn clocked in at 1:07.23, finishing 1.44 seconds off the winner, Austria’s Mirjam Puchner, the silver medalist in Super-G at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. In her second run, she completed it in 1:07.52, trailing winner Cornelia Huetter of Austria by 1.53 seconds, the defending World Cup downhill champion.

Vonn is also expected to participate in Sunday’s Super-G races, though her plans beyond that remain unannounced. She aims to utilize the lower-level FIS races to gather the critical ranking points needed to qualify for World Cup events.

Upon her retirement, Vonn held the record as the most accomplished American World Cup skier ever, boasting 82 individual event victories. This placed her second overall in alpine skiing history, only behind Sweden’s Ingemar Stenmark. At that time, a 24-year-old American, Mikaela Shiffrin, was substantially behind her with 56 wins. However, since then, Shiffrin — who sustained an injury last week during a World Cup event in Vermont — has accumulated 43 more World Cup wins, breaking the record and standing just one win away from the 100-mark.

Vonn competed in four U.S. Olympic teams from 2002 to 2018, securing three medals, including a gold in the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games. However, recurring knee injuries sidelined her from the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

With her knee now pain-free and a renewed opportunity on the horizon, Vonn is back to explore where this journey may lead, potentially toward an unexpected Olympic bid.

“It’s been 6 years since my last race, so I still have much equipment to assess, find my rhythm, and really get back into racing shape,” she shared in her Instagram post. “I’m enjoying myself a lot and wish to continue doing so!”