Why Lindsey Vonn believes this Winter Olympics could be harder than ever for her

Alpine skier and former Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn on competing at the upcoming Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in Milano Cortina next year. The 41-year-old alpine skier aims to make a strong comeback with her performance.

Vonn revealed that this Olympics will be quite different, not just because she has crossed the age of 40, but also because this would be her first Olympics without her mother. Her mother, Linda Krohn, had passed away in 2022 after nearly a year-long battle with ALS.

Sharing a video reel from her performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the alpine skier wrote in the caption of her Instagram story,

"Wow.... This Olympics is going to be hard without my Mom for the first time in her life!"

Screengrab of Lindsey Vonn's recent Instagram story [Image Source : Lindsey Vonn's Instagram]

Lindsey Vonn once reflected on competing despite injuries and hardships before undergoing knee replacement surgery, which brought her back in action. Vonn remarked in the interview with the Outside Online portal,

"What I did wasn’t easy. There aren’t words to quantify how hard it was for as long as I did it."

Lindsey Vonn was last seen in action at the World Championships held earlier this year, where she finished 16th in the team combined event. Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson took home the gold medal.

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Lindsey Vonn's performance at the Winter Olympics

Lindsey Vonn at the 2010 Winter Olympics [Image Source: Getty]

Lindsey Vonn made her Olympic debut at the age of 17, when she participated in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Vonn had a fairly decent outing, as she finished sixth overall in the combined event.

The alpine skier had to wait for eight more years until she won her first Olympic medal at the quadrennial event held in Vancouver in 2010. Lindsey Vonn won not one, but two Olympic medals at the Vancouver edition, with a gold medal in the downhill event and a bronze medal in the Super G event.

Lindsey Vonn had to wait for another eight years to win another Olympic medal, when she won a bronze medal in the downhill event at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. However, Vonn decided to retire from the sport in 2019 due to recurring injuries.

After more than five years of her self-imposed exile, Lindsey Vonn came out of retirement in December 2024. She hopes to win another Olympic medal at the Milano Cortina edition before hanging up her skiing boots for good.