The mood in Lindsey Vonn’s camp leading up to the Milan Cortina Olympics has taken a turn. Where before there was only excitement, now there are nerves.
“Things changed a little bit this week,” Martina Sailer, the daughter of Vonn’s childhood coach and mentor Erich Sailer and a longtime family friend, said with a nervous chuckle during a phone interview this week with The Post.
It’s only natural after the 41-year-old, who is in the middle of an Olympic comeback that has captivated the world, completely ruptured her ACL in her left knee during her final downhill tune-up on Jan. 30 and had to be airlifted off the course in Crans-Montana. The three-time Olympic medalist’s status for the Games was immediately thrown into question.
Yet, Vonn didn’t let up and successfully completed her first training run Friday with a time of 1:40.33 — 1.39 seconds off the lead in 11th place.
“Imagine taking a car down a mountain but with no road and at 80 miles per hour. You couldn’t do it,” Tony Olin, close family friend and Vonn’s former private coach at Buck Hill in Minnesota, told The Post this week over the phone. “And that’s what you’re doing with your body, and she knows that.”
After the crash, Sailer messaged the star alpine skier, whom she has known since Vonn’s birth, writing she was thinking of her. Vonn has her “head down,” Sailer said, focusing solely on her goal of winning as Sunday’s women’s downhill final inches closer.
“She’s been laser-focused on the goal for a while now,” said Sailer, who is traveling to Milan with her husband, two daughters, and Vonn’s aunt. “Number 1, I want her to do well. I want her to be safe. I care for her as a human being. But mostly, of course I want her to reach her goals and do her best. We’re super-excited to cheer her on in whatever capacity that is. We’re hoping for the best.”
It came as no surprise to both Sailer and Olin that Vonn has decided to push forward. For one, she has overcome worse in her career.
In the 2019 World Championships in Åre, Sweden, Vonn endured a major crash during the Super-G. Erich Sailer, who died in August 2025 and Olin called him Vonn’s “soul mentor,” advised his protege that it’s “only 90 seconds of your life. You can do anything for 90 seconds.”
Five days later, those 90 seconds won Vonn a bronze medal, skiing on what she later learned was several knee injuries.
“She pieced herself back together. There’s so much to overcome, but she’s willing to muster that courage,” Olin said.
That warrior-like mentality and work ethic is something Vonn has always harnessed.
Vonn’s mother, Lindy Anne Lund, who passed away in 2022 after a battle with ALS, suffered a stroke after the Olympian was born. She went on to have four more children, and Vonn was often the helper, Olin explained.
Vonn arrived at Buck Hill’s racing program at 6 years old after Alan Kildow, Vonn’s father and Erich Sailer’s first racing protege, prodded Olin into coaching her. From age 7 to 11, Vonn trained at 7 a.m. before school three times a week with the coach before the family moved to Vail, Colorado.
By 9 years old, Vonn had traveled to Europe without her family to train with the older Buck Hill racers for three weeks, showing discipline and an “incredible level of maturity,” Sailer said. When Vonn came home, the program quickly moved to train at Mount Hood in Oregon for two more weeks.
“[There was] some serious resilience there,” said Olin, who was also coached by both Erich Sailer and Kildow. “So I think it was just kinda a matter of fact. ‘So this is what I do.’ It was just part of her, and she just loved doing it.”
Outside of her work as an entrepreneur, Vonn poured her whole life into skiing, and it largely has made her who she is going into her fifth Olympics. It made sense to those close to her that she came out of retirement for another shot at glory.
At the news of her return in November 2024, Sailer’s daughters, Greta and Lulu, who are also young ski racers, ran outside their home and screamed at the top of their lungs in excitement.
“She’s always had the top doctors, top physical therapists, top trainers,” Sailer said. “They and she know precisely what her body can handle. When she was coming back, I felt really confident that she knew she would be strong.
“She wouldn’t do it just to do it. She wanted to do it and be the best.”
Days following her recent crash, Vonn posted a photo of Erich Sailer’s gravesite in Telfs, Austria — where she made a pit stop before heading to Cortina — on her Instagram story. She wrote, “I know exactly what he would say. … Just wish he was here to say it …”
Martina Sailer is almost certain Vonn was reminding herself of the 90 second racing motto.
“I think she really took that to heart, and so, you know, here we are again,” Sailer said.
