When she retired in 2019, Lindsay Vaughn was already considered one of the greatest U.S. skiers of all time.

Four World Cup titles, three Olympic medals, including the first gold for an American woman in downhill skiing and 82 wins at World Cup events.

But in 2024, at the age of 40, Vaughn returned to the slopes, once again competing at the highest level and becoming the oldest World Cup winner in history.

In February, the world watched as she chased another Olympic medal in Italy.

Just 13 seconds into that run, a devastating crash.

Vaughn airlifted off the course with a broken ankle

and complex fractures in her leg. I recently spoke with Lindsey Vaughn and began by asking her

how she's doing five surgeries and just a few months after that crash.

I'm doing better things. It's still very slow and I'm trying to make progress as best I can,

but I'm in a lot better shape than I was when everyone last saw me, that's for sure.

I mean, to watch it as viewers was horrifying, it's unimaginable what it was like for you to live through that,

just 13 seconds into that downhill run. In the moment, did you know

the extent of your injuries? Did you know how serious it was at the time? Yeah, I knew immediately

that I had broken my leg. I didn't know how badly it was broken. I was hoping that it wasn't a

compound fracture. And then I was, I remember telling the doctor, you know,

please don't let me get compartment syndrome, which I did.

And, you know, unfortunately, there was nothing that anyone could have done about that.

That's really dependent upon how much trauma is in your body.

And of course, my leg was broken in quite a few places.

But I actually didn't really know the severity of

everything as a whole until I actually left Italy and was on my way to the U.S. And then my doctor

kind of broke everything down for me step by step on, you know, what happened and where things

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