Lindsey Vonn looked incredible as she made a glamorous appearance at the US Open on Sunday, six months after the devastating skiing accident that nearly cost her a leg.
The 41-year-old Olympic champion stepped onto the blue carpet at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York on August 30, where she joined the stars arriving for the opening day of the tournament.
Lindsey turned heads in a striking lime-green floor-length dress that hugged her athletic figure before falling into a darker ombré hem.
The sleeveless high-neck design featured dramatic draped detailing around the hips, while the skiing legend accessorized with a tiny snakeskin-print handbag and a gold watch.
She wore her long blonde hair in a relaxed half-up style, with loose strands framing her face, and opted for understated makeup and a glowing complexion.
The appearance was particularly poignant given everything Lindsey’s body has endured since February.
© USTA via Getty ImagesLindsey’s devastating Olympic crash
Lindsey’s trip to New York comes just over six months after her much-anticipated return to the Winter Olympics ended in a horrific crash during the women’s downhill at Milano Cortina on February 8.
She had entered the Games as one of the extraordinary comeback stories of the Olympics, having returned to competitive skiing years after her 2019 retirement following a partial knee replacement.
Instead, Lindsey crashed at high speed on the Olimpia delle Tofane course in Cortina and suffered a complex fracture to her left leg. “I was number one in the world, and potentially on my way to an Olympic medal,” she later told Vanity Fair. “Now I’m in a wheelchair.”
© InstagramThe severity of her injuries was frightening. Lindsey subsequently revealed that doctors had at one stage been concerned about whether they could save her leg, and by May she had undergone eight surgeries.
Speaking shortly after the accident, she described the road ahead as a “long, long” recovery.
Lindsey shares encouraging recovery update
There has been more positive news in recent weeks. Days before attending the US Open, Lindsey shared footage of herself back in the gym as she continues the painstaking process of rebuilding her strength and mobility.
And in an interview broadcast on CBS Sunday Morning on August 23, Lindsey reflected on the remarkable journey that took her back to professional skiing in the first place.
Her partial knee replacement in 2024 had initially been about quality of life rather than staging an athletic comeback. But when she eventually returned to the slopes without the chronic pain that had plagued the latter years of her career, everything changed.
“I could do the thing that I loved the most in the world without pain,” she said.
Her return ultimately saw Lindsey become one of the world’s leading downhill racers again in her 40s, challenging long-held assumptions about age and elite female athletes.
“I think there’s a perception that when you get to a certain age, you’re supposed to do a certain thing, and this is the way it’s supposed to look,” she told ELLE earlier this year. “Everyone’s path is different.”
© Getty ImagesCould Lindsey Vonn compete again?
Perhaps most remarkably, Lindsey still hasn’t definitively closed the door on another comeback.
Despite the severity of her Olympic injuries, the skier has resisted making an immediate decision about retirement.
In her recent appearance on Maria Sharapova’s Pretty Tough podcast, Lindsey said she plans to assess both her physical and mental condition next spring before making a decision about her future.
For now, recovery remains the priority. She also spoke candidly about something she unexpectedly missed during her original retirement: the intense focus that elite sport gave her.
Training allowed her to escape the constant distractions of everyday life, she explained, describing the athlete’s “bubble” in which phones, emails and outside noise disappear and complete concentration takes over. Since stepping away from competition, she has tried to recreate that sense of presence through gym sessions and meditation.
Life, love and looking to the future
Her sporting future isn’t the only area of life Lindsey has been reassessing. Before the Olympics, she spoke unusually candidly about relationships and her hopes of becoming a mother.
The former champion revealed that she has frozen her eggs and remains hopeful about having children, while acknowledging that her future family may not look exactly as she once expected.
“I hope I can find someone that I can have a family with,” she told ELLE. “But I also know I can do it on my own if I need to.”
Lindsey explained that therapy after her first retirement had helped her understand what she wanted from life and relationships away from the identity that had defined her since childhood.
“When I retired, I needed to work on myself to figure out what I wanted in my life,” she said, asking herself questions including: “What are the things that I need as a person? That I need in a relationship?”
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