Vonns

MILAN — There’s a lot of love in those gloves.

Before her fateful downhill run Sunday — one that ended with a violent crash after 13 seconds — Lindsey Vonn pulled on a pair of out-of-production gloves from her childhood skiing idol, Picabo Street.

The gloves are weathered and white, their brightness dulled by the decades, with the brand name “reusch” across the knuckles and a big, plum-colored sun on top. On the wrist straps are Street’s initials, scrawled in marker.

Vonn didn’t announce the gesture, nor did NBC, which employs Street as a color commentator. Street was at the starting gate of the Olimpia delle Tofane course for Sunday’s coverage.

Street confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the two longtime friends made the glove exchange before the Olympics.

“When she saw a picture of me in those gloves, she was like, ‘Oh, those would be cool,’” Street told the Times. “And I caught wind of it, and was like, ‘Well, I just happen to have them.’”

Those gloves are especially meaningful to Street because they are immortalized on the bronze statue of her in Sun Valley, Idaho. The sun across the top is visible in the sculpted detail.

“It was just my way of being able to show her that, you know, I love you and I believe in you,” Street said. “And wear these, they’ll be fun.”

The two were on the U.S. Ski Team together — Street at the end of her career, Vonn at the beginning — and have been close friends for years. Vonn co-produced the documentary “Picabo,” and in it tells Street, “You are my hero.”

The gloves Picabo Street gave to Lindsey Vonn before Vonn’s race in the Olympic downhill on Feb. 8.

(Courtesy of Picabo Street)

Street, whose skiing and who’s first name helped make her a pop-culture sensation during her Olympic career is a huge fan of Vonn. In speaking to the Times, she said on multiple occasions, “I’m not the story here, so this isn’t about me.”

Still, there are some uncanny coincidences. For instance, Vonn was the 13th skier in Sunday’s lineup and her run lasted 13 seconds before her fall, in which she broke her left leg. Late in her career, Street suffered a broken left leg in a race that took place on Friday the 13th in Crans Montana, Switzerland, where Vonn sustained a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in a fall at the end of January.

Street had an emotional reaction when she learned what bib number Vonn would be wearing.

“I about puked when I saw number 13,” Street said. “I got very little sleep. I cried all night long, and I cried in the morning. I couldn’t shake it.”

She said her main concern now is her friend’s return to health, not for competitive skiing but for life.

“I want her leg to work for her,” Street said. “I want her nerves to work for her. I want her to have function of her whole body again, and in case she wants to have a family, she can play with her kids.”

The gloves weren’t the first piece of equipment Street loaned to Vonn.

Lindsey Vonn prepares to leave the downhill starting gate while wearing Picabo Street’s gloves on Feb. 8.

(Screenshot courtesy of NBC)

“I remember when I raced in Salt Lake, and I retired, and I was packed up and leaving the house we were staying in,” Street said, referring to the 2002 Winter Olympics. “She came into the house, and I remember giving her a huge hug and giving her a couple of items — one of which she wore in those Games — which was a sleeve around her braid, because we both have really long hair.

“I wore a red, white and blue American-flag neoprene sleeve around my hair, and she wore one as well. I handed her that there and was like, ‘Here you go. Go get ‘em.’”

After Vonn’s crash Sunday, Street told her own mother about loaning the gloves.

“I said, ‘Oh God, mom, she was wearing my gloves,’” she said, her voice catching with emotion.

“At first my mom said, ‘Oh, honey,’ and then she goes, ‘OK, let’s flip this. Maybe the gloves kept her from getting injured worse.’”

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn’s downhill run lasted 13 seconds. The question of whether she should have been racing at all with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament will be debated for years.

What was going on in the mind of the legendary 41-year-old ski racer, whose violent crash resulted in her being airlifted off the course and in surgery hours later Sunday with, at minimum, a fractured left leg?

Was it a calculated risk or stubborn foolishness?

“She’s so tough mentally that as long as physically she was OK, she was going to do it,” said Stacey Cook, a retired racer and Vonn’s former teammate on the U.S. Ski Team. “I think the harder part is wrapping your mind around putting yourself at risk again. And that’s never been an issue for her. She’s always been willing to, like, put it on the line… She was always the, like, extra fearless one.”

American Lindsey Vonn completed an alpine ski downhill training session in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, without incident on Friday, two days before she crashed.

(Marco Trovati / Associated Press)

What’s more, Cook said, consider what was at stake.

“It isn’t common in everyday life to go another week with an ACL injury, putting yourself at risk,” Cook said. “It’s always common to take care of it right away. But there’s more on the line for the Olympics than that.”

Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who lives in Los Angeles and is a preeminent sports surgeon, doesn’t count Vonn among his current patients but he has scoped her knee twice to remove scar tissue. He’s also in contact with members of her medical team, as he trained Dr. Tom Hackett, a renowned orthopedic surgeon at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., who works with Vonn to manage her knee health.

“These aren’t amateur people who were helping her make this decision,” said ElAttrache, who specializes in sports medicine at Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic and is renowned for his treatment and research of knee, shoulder and elbow injuries.

ElAttrache said the typical risk-reward calculation was not in play.

“Everybody knew going into it that there was only one way that this was going to come out good, and that’s if she not only made it through the race, but performed well,” he said. “If she didn’t ski a Lindsey Vonn race and was at least competitive at the top of the leaderboard, it would be considered a failure. There wasn’t a lot of upside, except for Lindsey.”

This combination of images shows American Lindsey Vonn crashing during an alpine ski women’s downhill race at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Sunday.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

Vonn’s crash came near the top of the Olimpia delle Tofane course where she had won 12 World Cup races during her storied career, six in downhill and six in super-G. She was on the podium there a total of 20 times before these Olympics.

Cook said the first turn on the course, which Vonn was traversing when she got into trouble, is actually much steeper falling away from the skier than it looks on TV.

“It’s like dipping into a double-black-diamond and trying to come back out of it for a second,” Cook said. “What the racer sees in that section is way different than how it looks on TV. The way it feels is a lot different.”

The racer is traversing the hill perpendicular to the fall line, almost moving in an upward direction.

“It’s a very tough turn,” Cook said. “And the next gate, you can’t see it until you’re pretty much on top of it. You might as well put on a blindfold because you can’t see anything in front of you.”

She said you have to be there to truly understand the difficulty of negotiating the turn.

American Lindsey Vonn crashes during the alpine downhill during the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on Sunday.

(Handout / Getty Images)

“To the average fan, you would stand on top of it and just go, ‘Um, no. Not doing that.’ ”

ElAttrache has studied video of the crash and said there’s no obvious indication the knee in question caused Vonn to fall.

“It’s unclear that her fall was due to an instability event in her knee … and when you look at it, you don’t see that she was weight-bearing on that knee and that she had an instability event that led to the fall,” he said.

An executive from the International Ski and Snowboard Federation told reporters Monday that Vonn was simply “incredibly unlucky” in the crash.

“It was a one in a 1,000,” said Johan Eliasch, FIS president. “She got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air in the gate and started rotating. No one can recover from that, unless you do a 360. … This is something which is part of ski racing. It’s a dangerous sport.”

Vonn had a chance to compete on one of her favorite courses and cap her career with a meaningful Olympic moment.

“This was not about proving anything to anyone,” said Dr. Armando Gonzalez, Vonn’s mental coach, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times two days before the fateful race. “It was more about defying the odds that were placed against her and being a competitor that always found a way, no matter what, no matter if it was pain, no matter if it was noise from the outside, she’d always find a way.”

ElAttrache made a comparison between Vonn and star NFL receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who was playing on a compromised ACL when the Rams won the Super Bowl in the 2021 season. Beckham understood the risks, but was somewhat at an advantage as a receiver because he knew the routes he would be running, as opposed to being a defensive back who has to react abruptly to what the player he’s covering is doing.

In the first half of the Super Bowl against Cincinnati, Beckham suffered a complete ACL tear and was incapacitated.

Often, ElAttrache said, an ultra-elite athlete will apply a different calculus when deciding whether to play with an injury such as a compromised ACL.

He said Vonn, having endured multiple injuries and surgeries to both knees, understood the risks to her own body the way few athletes do. And whereas most skiers would be hamstrung by a fear of injury that could endanger their career, Vonn is an established icon willing to accept risks others might not. In short, it might not make sense to many, but it made sense to the battle-tested Vonn, who has “earned the right” to make those types of decisions.

What’s more, she had performed well on the same course the day before.

“If you have somebody like her, who’s earned the right to try it, if that’s what she really wants to do, she was going into that race as one of the best skiers on the U.S. team,” ElAttrache said. “She was driving that ship.”

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO — CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The mountainside packed with fans and competitors was eerily silent after disaster struck.

Lindsey Vonn, attempting to win a gold medal despite sustaining a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her final race before the Games, clipped her pole on a gate early in her first Olympic downhill skiing run and crashed Sunday.

Vonn, 41, could be heard screaming after the crash. She received medical attention on the snow and was airlifted off the mountain.

The race was halted while Vonn was treated. Her teammate, Breezy Johnson, held the early lead and went on to win the race after the competition resumed. Johnson won the Americans’ first gold medal of the Games.

The U.S. downhill team celebrated with Johnson but continued to think of Vonn.

American Lindsey Vonn crashes into a gate during an alpine ski downhill race at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Sunday.

(Handout / Getty Images)

“It’s heartbreaking,” said American Isabella Wright, who finished 22nd in the competition. “Jackie [Wiles] and myself, we were up there. We watched it live and things just happen so quick in this sport. It looked like Lindsey had incredible speed out of that turn and she hooked her arm [on a gate on the course] and it’s just over. Just like that. After all the preparation, after years of hard work and rehabilitation and all the things, it’s the last thing you want to see somebody go through.”

Vonn retired after a series of injuries seemed to be too much to overcome. Nearly six years later, she announced she missed racing and was confident she had fully recovered her form after a right knee replacement.

She shocked many by immediately winning races needed to qualify for the Games and entered the Olympics as the leader in the World Cup downhill standings. Nine days ago, she suffered a torn ACL, a bone bruise and meniscus damage.

Amid great scrutiny, Vonn was determined to keep racing with the support of her medical team and a large knee brace. She was optimistic about her ability to compete after practice runs and pushed back at critics on the social media platform X.

Fans react after watching American Lindsey Vonn crash during the women’s downhill skiing race at the Winter Olympics Sunday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“It’s the last thing you want to see for Lindsey, but she should be really proud of everything she has gone through to get back here,” Wright said. “And regardless, if got last today, if she won — she obviously crashed. Whatever happened today, she’s an inspiration to all of us and she should be really proud. I know it probably doesn’t feel like that right now, but I hope one day she can recognize that.”