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February 7, 2026<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Lindsey Vonn\u2019s knees reveal the toll of elite skiing\u2014and the body\u2019s resilience<\/p>\n The decorated Olympic skier has had numerous injuries and a partial knee replacement but still plans to go for the gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics<\/p>\n By Tanya Lewis edited by Andrea Thompson<\/span><\/p>\n Lindsey Vonn of Team United States in action during the Downhill Training of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre on February 6, 2026, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.<\/p>\n Daniel Kopatsch\/VOIGT\/GettyImages<\/p>\n From skating to curling, the thrilling sports of the Winter Olympics have plenty of science behind them. Follow our coverage here to learn more.<\/p>\n Lindsey Vonn is a physiological marvel. The 41-year-old Olympic gold medalist skier has, quite literally, risen to the top of her sport and stayed there, despite numerous injuries that could have been career-ending.<\/p>\n In 2018 she announced she was retiring the following year, citing concerns about her physical condition as she got older But in 2024 she returned to competition after a remarkably successful partial knee replacement surgery on her right knee. She was all set to compete in the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics this week when she crashed in a race in Crans-Montana on January 30 and ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) on her other knee. Nevertheless, the world class skier says she plans to still compete in the Games.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cMy Olympic dream is not over,\u201d she wrote on Instagramlast week.<\/p>\n Downhill skiing is a punishing sport. Elite skiers can reach speeds above 80 miles per hour, and because kinetic energy goes up with the square of the velocity it exerts considerable force on the body. And the knees bear a lot of the brunt. If your weight is centered over your skis and you\u2019re in control, that\u2019s not a problem. But if you end up, say, too far back on your skis, or you land wrong, it creates shearing forces on the knee that can cause injuries.<\/p>\n Vonn has suffered repeated damage to her ligaments over the years, and that can cause the joint to loosen and cause problems. Sam Ward, co-director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at the University of California, San Diego, compared this to the wear and tear on a tire. \u201cFirst of all, it hurts,\u201d he says. \u201cSecond of all, as you lose tread on your tire, you can imagine things get a little sloppier as you\u2019re driving around,\u201d says Ward, who is an orthopedic surgeon but has not treated Vonn. If the joint is painful and swells up, it changes the way your brain controls the knee, he says. Vonn couldn\u2019t walk without pain or limping and was unable to straighten her knee, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n In 2024 Vonn underwent robotic surgery to partially replace her right knee with a titanium one\u2014effectively retreading the tire. The knee consists of three key components: the lower end of the femur (thighbone), the upper end of the tibia (shinbone) and the patella (kneecap), all of which are covered in cartilage. In contrast to a total knee replacement, in which portions of all three bones and cartilage are removed and replaced with artificial ones, a partial knee replacement only replaces one of these parts, leaving the healthy ligaments intact. Using a surgical robot made by MAKO Surgical Corp., Martin Roche, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in West Palm Beach, Fla., created a scan of her knee, removed the damaged cartilage and bone in a minimally invasive surgery and installed the titanium implant.<\/p>\n The surgery was a success: Vonn was able to straighten her knee again, and after two months, she was wakeboarding on it, the Times reported. She returned to ski competition soon afterward.<\/p>\n Vonn was gearing up for a comeback at the Milano-Cortina Olympics when she tore her ACL last week. She announced that she also had bone bruising and damage to her meniscus\u201a a thin, crescent-shaped piece of cartilage in the knee that acts as a shock absorber.<\/p>\n The ACL is a ligament that connects the shin bone to the thigh bone. It provides rotational stability for the knee. ACL tears are one of the most common injuries not just in skiing but in many sports. And they\u2019re more common in female athletes, because women have looser joints and less muscle mass than men and land differently from jumps.<\/p>\n In her latest injury Vonn appears to have absorbed a lot of shock, possibly because of the terrain and her stiff boots, and had what\u2019s known in skiing as a \u201crecovery\u201d\u2014basically, when you get off-balance and have to go into an unusual position, but you don\u2019t fall\u2014as her skis \u201cgrabbed,\u201d says Christopher Brown, a former All-American ski racer and ski coach, as well as a professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Skis have very sharp edges that are designed to grab on to ice to help change direction. And if the ski turns underneath you, and you have stiff boots that limit motion, you can be applying a shear load to the top of the tibia, or shinbone, creating what\u2019s called a \u201cvalgus load\u201d\u2014a force toward the body\u2019s midline\u2014and inward rotation. This is \u201cthe most common injury mechanism for the ACL in skiing,\u201d Brown says.<\/p>\n ACL tears sometimes require surgery to reconstruct the ligament, although not always. You can ski with a torn ACL, but the knee has less stability. Vonn has said she plans to ski with a brace at the Olympics.<\/p>\n As impressive as Vonn\u2019s physical ability is, Ward says, a lot of it comes down to mental fortitude. \u201cThe mental part of the game is giant here,\u201d he says. Whether Vonn will end up winning a gold medal at this Olympics remains to be seen. \u201cI\u2019m not a betting person,\u201d Ward says, \u201cbut if I was a betting person, I would not bet against this person.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 7, 2026 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Lindsey Vonn\u2019s knees reveal the toll of elite skiing\u2014and the body\u2019s resilience The decorated Olympic skier has had numerous injuries and a partial knee replacement but still plans to go for the gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics By Tanya Lewis edited by Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1597,22900,8486,22899,516,21322,21075],"class_list":{"0":"post-43937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-injured","9":"tag-knees","10":"tag-lindsey","11":"tag-olympian","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-ski","14":"tag-vonn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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