The 40-year-old returns from a five-year hiatus and is rejoining the USA Alpine snowboarding workforce earlier than the 2026 Winter Olympic Video games.
Alpine snowboarding star Lindsey Vonn is popping out of retirement to rejoin the US Ski Staff, aspiring to race once more at age 40 – and 6 years after her final Olympics.
Vonn is a three-time Olympic medallist with a downhill gold and super-G bronze on the 2010 Vancouver Video games and a bronze within the downhill on the 2018 PyeongChang Video games in South Korea. She can also be a four-time total World Cup champion and owns eight world championship medals.
“Getting again to snowboarding with out ache has been an unimaginable journey,” Vonn introduced on Thursday, including that she needs to “proceed to share my information of the game with these unimaginable ladies” on the American roster.
Her 82 World Cup race victories stood because the document for a girl till that whole was eclipsed in January 2023 by American Mikaela Shiffrin, who continues to be lively and is now as much as 97 wins – greater than any Alpine ski racer within the historical past of the game.
Earlier than eclipsing Vonn’s whole, Shiffrin mentioned: “I don’t know if I may fill Lindsey’s footwear, the way in which that she has worn them.”
Vonn’s final competitors was in February 2019 after she handled an extended sequence of accidents all through her profession.
She has been coaching in current months, US Ski & Snowboard mentioned on Thursday.
Vonn is again with the workforce efficient instantly, however it’s not but identified which explicit races she can be aiming to enter. The primary downhill, her speciality, through the present World Cup season can be held at Beaver Creek, Colorado, in December.
US Ski & Snowboard President and CEO Sophie Goldschmidt mentioned Vonn’s “dedication and keenness in the direction of Alpine snowboarding is inspiring, and we’re excited to have her again on snow and see the place she will be able to go from right here”.
The subsequent Winter Olympics are in Italy in February 2026, and whereas it’s not clear whether or not Vonn plans to take part, the ladies’s Alpine snowboarding occasions can be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo on the course the place she holds the document of 12 victories.
Vonn can profit from the Worldwide Ski and Snowboard Federation’s new wild-card rule, which permits former champions to get first rate beginning numbers for races if they arrive out of retirement – with out having to regain rating factors in lower-level races.
