Lindsey Vonn has suffered several major ski injuries over her career, but the most famous one people ask about is her serious right knee crash at the 2013 World Championships.

The headline injury people mean

When someone asks “what injury did Lindsey Vonn have,” they usually mean her devastating crash in the super‑G at the 2013 World Championships in Schladming, Austria.

In that fall she:

  • Tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her right knee.
  • Tore the medial collateral ligament (MCL) in the same knee.
  • Suffered a lateral tibial plateau fracture (a fracture of the upper part of the shin bone near the knee joint).

She lost balance on landing a jump, flipped, landed on her back, and crashed through a gate before sliding to a stop, and had to be airlifted from the course.

Other big injuries (context)

Vonn is sadly known for a whole catalogue of injuries over the years.

Some of the notable ones include:

  • Multiple ACL reconstructions on her right knee, including a later complete ACL tear that forced her to miss the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
  • A series of fractures, including knee fractures and a severely fractured humerus (upper arm) in 2016.
  • Right knee problems so severe she ultimately had a right knee replacement in 2024 after retirement.

An example of how bad it got: in one 60 Minutes Sports interview, she talked about having had ligaments reconstructed with her own hamstring and patellar tendon and living with chronic knee pain.

Most recent headline: 2026 crash

Even after retirement from full‑time World Cup racing, Vonn’s 2026 Olympic comeback made news again.

Key recent points:

  • In late January 2026, she ruptured the ACL in her left knee during a downhill race just before the Milano‑Cortina Winter Olympics.
  • Despite that, she still chose to race the Olympic downhill, crashed again, and was airlifted off the mountain , with both knees twisted in the fall and her condition later described as “stable” but injured.

So, if you’re asking in general “what injury did Lindsey Vonn have,” the short, accurate answer is:

She is best known for tearing her right ACL and MCL and fracturing her tibial plateau in a 2013 super‑G crash, and later rupturing her left ACL in 2026, on top of many other fractures and surgeries across her career.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.