Lindsey Vonn found a unique way to thank all the medical professionals who got her to the Milano Cortina Olympics.
She’s shining her considerable spotlight on them.
Vonn has partnered with FIGS, apparel maker for health-care workers, on an ad campaign that celebrates the medical team that participated in her partial knee replacement and recovery from it. And, by extension, the entire medical profession.
The campaign, with a tagline of ‘It takes heart to build bodies that break records,’ launches Monday, Jan. 26, on NBC and its platforms and will run through the end of the Olympics. The Milano Cortina Games are Feb. 6-22.
‘This comeback, I wouldn’t be doing this at all if it hadn’t been for the medical team that believed in me and that supported me and basically held my hand through everything,” Vonn told USA TODAY Sports.
‘I feel privileged to be able to have worked with such extraordinary people, and I want to recognize their effort,’ Vonn said. ‘And not just their effort, but all of the medical staff that’s helped Team USA and all medical staffs in general. They just are under recognized.’
Vonn would certainly know.
The 2010 Olympic downhill champion has had multiple serious injuries throughout her career, with her right knee suffering the most damage. She retired in 2019 not because she was done with ski racing, but because the pain had made it impossible to continue.
‘This is me, Lindsey Vonn, downhill skiing champion,’ Vonn says in one clip for the campaign, as images of her skiing and being on the podium are replaced by various X-rays, ‘with a body broken beyond repair.’
In April 2024, however, Vonn had a partial titanium knee replacement. Within days she was able to bend and straighten her knee, something she hadn’t been able to do in years. As her recovery progressed, Vonn decided to see if she could race again.
She was back on the World Cup circuit in December 2024, and finished last season with a silver medal in the super-G at the World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho. With a full offseason to train and fine-tune her equipment, she has dominated the speed races this season, making the podium in all five downhills and two of the first three super-Gs.
‘When I did the surgery, it was literally just to live a pain-free life,’ Vonn said, ‘and it was way more than I bargained for. Which I’m very happy about.’
But it took that entire medical team.
In both shorter clips and a 1-minute film for the campaign, Vonn puts the attention squarely on those people who put her back together.
There is Tom Hackett, the orthopedic surgeon who’s done most of Vonn’s previous surgeries and who did another before the partial knee replacement so she could have that procedure. Lorenzo Gonzalez, a physical therapist and acupuncturist, who got her body back in alignment because it was completely out of whack from all the compensating she’d been doing for her knee.
There were the nurses who were at all her surgeries, pre-op and post-op appointments, and helped with her recovery. Gonzalez again after surgery to make sure her body stayed in alignment. There’s ‘another Lindsey, my physio, my friend,’ and everyone everyone else who assisted during her rehab.
‘I want people to be able to hopefully find solutions that allow them to be in the similar position that I’m in, where they are pain-free. But it wouldn’t happen without the medical team,’ Vonn said.
‘All these people that helped me, it wouldn’t be possible without them,’ Vonn said. ‘And I really got involved mainly because I just want to recognize that.”
FIGS is a U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee sponsor, and will provide apparel for Team USA’s medical staff in Milano Cortina. The company also wanted to do an ad campaign around the Winter Games, and was thrilled when Vonn said she was interested.
She is, of course, one of the biggest stars of the Milano Cortina Games, and her comeback is a source of fascination. Vonn is the first elite skier to return to the sport after an artificial knee replacement, partial or otherwise.
During her surgery, orthopedic surgeon Martin Roche used a robotic arm to remove the damaged bone and cartilage on the outside of Vonn’s right knee and replaced it with titanium. She kept her ACL and meniscus, allowing her to maintain the ‘feel’ she had in her knee before.
‘(Vonn) is just such a testament to believing in yourself and getting the right people around you to create history and break records, which is what this campaign’s all about,’ said Trina Spear, CEO and co-founder of FIGS.
‘Her team of healthcare professionals believed that they could put her back together and fix her so she could go out and win medals, which she’s doing again.’
Vonn will be favored to win medals in all three of her races at the Olympics, the downhill, super-G and team combined, and several of the medical professionals featured in the campaign will be in Cortina to watch.
Vonn tells them often how much she appreciates them and what they did for her. Now she’s telling the world.
‘It is about that story of collaboration between Lindsey and her team of surgeons and physical therapists and athletic trainers and mental health professionals and how they’re working together to defy the odds and do the impossible,’ Spear said. ‘But our goal is to put them on a podium of their own.
‘We’re really proud to tell that story and they deserve it,’ Spear added. ‘They deserve it just as much as Lindsey deserves her, hopefully, gold medal during the Olympic Games.’