How to watch Lindsey Vonn ski with torn ACL in 2026 Winter Olympics medal events

Lindsey Vonn has spent two decades proving the fastest line in downhill skiing is usually the one that looks least survivable on replay. Now, at 41, she is trying to do one of the most audacious things an athlete can do: win with a torn left ACL that has become its own storyline.

How to watch Lindsey Vonn at the Winter Olympics

• Venue: Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre — Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
• Date: Feb. 8-12
• TV: NBC, USA Network
• Streaming: Peacock, NBCOlympics.com

Be sure to check out The Athletic’s Olympic schedule interactive page and Games Briefing, a daily Olympics newsletter.

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The timeline is critical. Downhill is Vonn’s signature, the purest expression of her speed game, and it’s a single-run medal race on Cortina’s Olympia delle Tofane track. No series. No margin. You get one shot, and the mountain does not care how famous you are or how many times you have rebuilt the rest of the machine to keep doing this.

Vonn doesn’t need validation. The Minnesota native already owns the 2010 Olympic downhill gold, three Olympic medals overall and 84 World Cup wins. This is about whether experience, pain tolerance and a practiced willingness to absorb risk can still get her down a course that behaves like an icy “vertical hockey rink” at 70 to 80 mph.

The medical calculus is unforgiving. If that knee destabilizes mid-run, the risk escalates fast: further ligament damage, bone bruising, loss of edge control at speed. Vonn had a robot-assisted partial replacement on her right knee in April 2024 to address cartilage damage. She knows the math. The question is whether math matters once muscle memory and adrenaline take over.

Vonn successfully navigated training runs on Friday and Saturday for the downhill. Now, the real test begins.

Potential medal events and live start times

All times below are ET. Listings are subject to change.

Sunday, Feb. 8

• Women’s downhill: 5:30 a.m. (USA, Peacock); 9:20 a.m. re-air (NBC)

The women’s downhill event will also re-air on USA at 5:45 a.m. Monday.

Tuesday, Feb. 10

• Women’s team combined, downhill: 4:30 a.m. (USA, Peacock)
• Women’s team combined, slalom: 7:50 a.m. (Peacock), 8 a.m. (USA)

Thursday, Feb. 12

• Women’s super-G: 5:30 a.m. (USA, Peacock)