Lindsey Vonn has been nominated to the United States Alpine Ski Team for the 2026-27 season, even as the 41-year-old continues a long rehabilitation from the Cortina training crash that threatened her left leg in February.
The nomination, announced by US Ski & Snowboard on May 7, places Vonn alongside overall World Cup champion Mikaela Shiffrin, Olympic downhill gold medallist Breezy Johnson, two-time Olympic super-G silver medallist Ryan Cochran-Siegle, and slalom regulars Paula Moltzan and Jacqueline Wiles, who took bronze for the United States in the team combined at Milan Cortina 2026.
Lauren Macuga, who missed the Milan Cortina Games after tearing her ACL in pre-Olympic preparation, has also been named to the squad as she works back to full fitness.
For Vonn the inclusion is largely symbolic. She has told The Associated Press she is "not in a position emotionally" to decide whether to return to competition and that any racing comeback would not happen until the 2027-28 season at earliest. She still has at least one further surgery to complete — to remove metal hardware and reconstruct her ACL — followed by a six-month rehab.
"I may retire. I may never race again and that would be completely fine," Vonn told the AP. "But I'm not in a position emotionally to make that decision at this point."
Shiffrin's place on the squad is the more straightforward one. The 31-year-old wrapped up a record-tying sixth overall Crystal Globe in March, equalling Annemarie Moser-Pröll's longstanding mark, and added Olympic slalom gold at Cortina to a career haul that already towers over the women's record book. Her 17th career Crystal Globe — the slalom title — landed via a season in which she won nine of her ten slalom starts.
"It's quite emotional. This thing sums up a whole season of work and fighting with the whole team," Shiffrin said after sealing the overall in March, before adding the now-famous question to her team — "Are you sure?" — when first told the title was clinched. "I'm ready for another season — or maybe not yet — but I'm excited to keep ski racing."
Breezy Johnson's nomination follows her Olympic downhill gold at Cortina and consolidates her place at the front of the American speed group. Cochran-Siegle returns as the senior figure on the men's side after his second Olympic super-G silver. Macuga and the slalom group — Moltzan, Wiles and others — fill out the women's technical events.
The nominations are recognition of where the US programme stands as it transitions out of an Olympic year. Vonn's place on the team carries more recovery weight than performance expectation, but the fact she remains rostered, at 41, after eight surgeries and a near-amputation scare, says enough about how US Ski & Snowboard views the comeback story it has watched twice in seven years.
For Vonn herself, the practical message is the same one she gave the AP: nothing happens before 2027-28. The door is open. The decision waits.