Lindsey Vonn is back in the gym four months after suffering a devastating leg injury.
The 41-year-old champion skier was all smiles on Instagram, posting laughing, hands up and muscles flex emojis in the caption of a video of her working out.
Vonn did so without any kind of heavy brace on the surgically repaired leg that she broke when she crashed during her first run at the Milano Cortina Olympics in February.
“The face I make when I can actually workout (sic) in the gym!,” Vonn wrote. “Makes me so happy and excited I can’t even put it into words!”
The video showed the three-time Olympic medalist taking skiing-like, back-and-forth steps on a residence mat, doing squats with a medicine ball between her knees on a slanted platform and Bulgarian split squats. Vonn then added a set of pull-ups.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for Vonn after suffered a horrific injury after clipping a gate during her downhill run in Italy. She was sent spinning and left writhing in pain before she was air-lifted off the mountain with a fractured tibia and broken ankle in February.
The first American woman to win gold in the downhill at the 2010 Games was already skiing with a torn ACL in her left knee. The Winter Games marked Vonn’s Olympic return after being retired for five years, following a partial knee replacement.
There was a chance her leg would have to be amputated after she developed compartment syndrome, where painful pressure builds within the muscles and blood flow is restricted.
“Dr. Tom Hackett saved my life. He saved my leg from being amputated,” she said in a February Instagram video. “If I hadn’t torn my ACL, Tom wouldn’t have been there.”
Vonn, who was seen in a wheelchair at the Los Angeles airport in late April, was without crutches in public for the first time at the Met Gala in May.
She has been very open about the mental challenge of coming back from the crash. Her future in the sport remains uncertain, though Vonn has pushed back on retirement.
“By far the most extreme and painful and challenging injury I’ve ever faced in my entire life, times 100,” Vonn said in February.
During her recovery, Vonn sparked dating rumors with French skier Matthew Bailet. The two were seen out in NYC together and later taking in “The Outsiders” on Broadway.