Brains
When Lindsey Vonn revealed in February that she had nearly lost her leg after developing compartment syndrome following a compound fracture, some armchair warriors dismissed the claim as dramatic. Vonn had suffered a complex tibia fracture along with fractures to her fibular head and tibial plateau when she crashed during the downhill race in Cortina d’Ampezzo at the 2026 Winter Games.
Vonn credited her orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Tom Hackett, with saving her leg from amputation due to compartment syndrome. Compartment syndrome is a serious condition in which swelling and internal bleeding increase pressure within muscle compartments. This, in turn, can cut off blood flow and lead to irreversible tissue death if not treated immediately. In Vonn’s case, an emergency fasciotomy relieved the pressure in time, and her leg was saved.
Vonn knew immediately what compartment syndrome meant and that her fear was not hypothetical, nor exaggerated. It echoed a real and devastating precedent from within the same sport — one that Vonn clearly remembers from her 2007-08 breakout season on the World Cup circuit, when she won her first overall season title.
On March 2, 2008, Matthias Lanzinger crashed during a World Cup Super-G in Kvitfjell, Norway, sustaining a severe open fracture to his lower leg accompanied by critical vascular damage. What followed was not only a medical emergency, but a logistical one. It took six hours to transport him to a hospital in Oslo, and by the time surgeons were able to operate, the damage had progressed beyond recovery. Compartment syndrome had already set in, cutting off circulation to the lower leg. Without oxygen, the tissue began to die. Two days later, doctors amputated the Austrian ski racer’s left leg below the knee.
In interviews, Lanzinger has identified the moment that defined his life not as the crash itself, but the moment he regained consciousness. Emerging from a medically induced coma, disoriented and physically incapacitated, he quickly grasped the gravity of his situation. The 27-year-old Austrian ski racer suddenly faced the abrupt end of his young racing career. Yet his response was not defined by panic or despair, but by clarity. What mattered, as he would later explain, was not what had been taken from him, but what remained. While the loss of his leg was tragic, Lanzinger called the life after his amputation “my second life,” turning the accident into an opportunity and viewing his survival as a second lease on life.
That perspective became the foundation for everything that followed.
Rehabilitation required both physical and psychological adaptation, beginning with the most basic and difficult step: accepting the irreversible change to his body. Lanzinger has spoken candidly about the process of confronting that reality, describing the moment he first removed the bandages and saw his leg as one of the most challenging stages of his recovery. However, when realizing he would still be able to work with a prosthesis, his focus went onto what was left rather than what he did not have anymore. From there, progress was incremental but deliberate, as he learned to navigate daily life with a prosthesis and rebuild his sense of identity outside the FIS World Cup circuit.
After a few years of studying for a business degree, Lanzinger returned to ski racing and became a successful Paralympian who went on to claim several medals on the IPC circuit and two Paralympic silver medals at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
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He retired from IPC ski racing in 2015 and went on to work as a life coach, ski racing manager for ski manufacturer Salomon, and became a GP motorcycle racer.
While his story is a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in a complicated leg fracture, his life story is not defined by what he lost on that course in Kvitfjell. Rather, it is defined by his incredible zest for life and his ability to move forward and be grateful for being alive. After his amputation, he constructed a “second life,” as he calls it, that is not shaped by the absence of a limb, but by the presence of resilience, perspective, and an enduring connection to skiing.
