Lindsay Vonn is not mentally ready to make a decision about racing again

NEW YORK — Lindsey Vonn is still recovering physically and mentally from her horrific accident at the Winter Olympics For now, tough decisions about the future can wait.

She needs at least one more to repair a torn ACL in the same knee — one that nearly severed a leg — after suffering a complex left leg fracture Feb. 8 in the women’s downhill skiing race.

So if Vonn, 41, runs again — and he’s not ready to make that decision — a return is at least a year and a half away, he told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.

“I just don’t want to jump to conclusions or speculate about what I might do,” Vaughn said. “I might retire. I might never run again and that would be perfectly fine, but I’m not in an emotional position to make that decision right now.”

Returning to retirement after a comeback season was an option Vonn thinks he would have retired had he been able to complete a comeback season that rivaled one of the best of his career. He ended a six-year absence from the game to race in Cortina, Italy, one of his favorite courses and the venue of the Milan Cortina Games.

The winner of three Olympic medals, including a downhill gold in 2010, crashed just 13 seconds into the race and suffered a compound tibia fracture, shocking a star-studded crowd and ending a season in which he led the World Cup downhill standings and finished no worse than fourth in any race.

He’s come back from various injuries before — he has a titanium implant in his right knee — but this was different. The pain was different. The eight surgeries are just one shy of the total for all others combined.

“It’s just a different kind of injury, again, the severity of the injury and understanding that I could have lost my leg and how bad it was,” Vaughn said. “I can deal with a lot of pain, but this was so extreme. It wasn’t even anything I’d experienced before in the pain universe of this injury.”

Vonn is making progress in and out of the gym, though not as quickly as she would like. He’s out of a wheelchair and is now on crutches — he’s both tired — and should be able to start walking short distances next week.

‘Tell me I can’t and I’ll prove you wrong’ He was able to travel again, making a trip to New York this week to discuss his support for biopharmaceutical company Invivid’s “Antibodies for Any Body” campaign, and he has an upcoming vacation planned.

Beyond that, the future is hard to see.

Vonn said she hasn’t talked to her doctor about what it will look like to return to skiing, saying they both prefer to focus on this phase of her recovery.

“Regardless, nothing really happens until ’27-28 because I still have one more surgery to get the metal out and replace my ACL. That still has to happen,” Vaughn said. “When I get my ACL fixed, then it’s another six months, so I’d say at least a year and a half before I can really get back to 100%, even just training in the gym.”

Vaughn knows that there may be risks in the return, and family members don’t want him to take them. Just a day after his accident, while he was still in the hospital, his father said his career would be over if it were up to him. Vaughan said: “He means the best. He forgot the cardinal rule with me that if you don’t want me to do something, you shouldn’t tell me I can’t. Tell me I can’t and I’ll prove you wrong.”

A risk Vonn has ‘always gladly taken’ but she ‘doesn’t want a do-over’ Vonn has never shied away from taking chances — she ran in the Olympics more than a week after tearing her ACL — no matter how they turned out.

“Downhill skiing is one of the most dangerous sports in the world, and it’s a risk I’ve always gladly taken, and this is the result, and I don’t regret it,” said Vonn, who noted that she did everything she could to fully prepare for the race. “I don’t want to do any work.”

But he will decide if he wants to race again.

For now, Vaughn says he’s just focused on getting his leg healed. Only after accomplishing this can he start thinking about a career that may or may not take off.

“I’m still, like I said, in survival mode in that I just want to get to this point and be able to assess where I am in my life,” said Vonn, whose 84 World Cup wins are second among women, behind only teammate Mikaela Shiffrin (110). “And calculate what I’ve done and calculate what could have been and decide to be in a much better place than where I am now.

“I don’t want to make a decision right now because I think it would be rash and probably too emotional and I don’t want to make a mistake, you know?”