Lindsey Vonn says she almost lost her leg after Olympics crash

Lindsey Vonn says her left leg almost had to be amputated following her horrific accident while competing at the Milan-Cortina Olympics this month.

In a video posted to Instagram on Monday, the American ski racing legend said she was released from the hospital more than two weeks after suffering a complex tibia fracture and other damage that led to compartment syndrome in her leg.

Vonn thanked Dr. Tom Hackett, an orthopedic surgeon who works for Vonn and Team USA, for saving the leg. She also gave indirect credit to the complete rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee that occurred in another fall on January 30, just a week before the start of the Olympics.

“I always say everything happens for a reason,” Vonn said. “If I hadn’t torn my ACL… Tom wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t have been able to save my leg.”

Vonn has won 84 World Cup races and three Olympic medals, including gold in downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games. She returned to ski racing last year after a six-year hiatus. Vonn didn’t let the torn ACL keep her from competing in what she called her “fifth and final Olympics.”

Despite several tries, Vonn lasted 13 seconds in the Feb. 8 downhill race before crashing. She was flown from the Olimpia delle Tofane course to Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

In addition to the previously reported complex tibia fracture, Vonn said Monday that she also fractured the fibular head and tibial plateau of her leg.

“Everything was in pieces,” said Vonn, who added that she also broke her right ankle.

Vonn said all the trauma to her leg caused a condition called compartment syndrome, which involves excessive pressure building up inside a muscle, either from bleeding or swelling, and can restrict blood flow and possibly lead to permanent injury or amputation.

“When you have so much trauma to one area of ​​your body that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck, and it crushes everything in the compartment, so all the muscles and nerves and tendons, everything dies,” Vonn said.

“And Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from amputation. He did what’s called a fasciotomy, where he opened both sides of my leg and kind of opened it up, so to speak, let it breathe. And he saved me.”

Since the accident, Vonn said, she has received a blood transfusion to raise her hemoglobin levels.

“I can’t tell you how painful it was,” she said.

Vonn still has a long road to recovery. She said she was “very immobile”, confined to a wheelchair for the moment, then on crutches for at least two months.

“It will take about a year for all the bones to heal, then I will decide if I want to remove all the metal or not,” Vonn wrote, “then go back into surgery and finally repair my ACL.”

She added in the video, “We have to take the hits as they come, so I’ll do my best with this one. It really knocked me down, but I’m like Rocky. I’m just going to keep getting back up.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.