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By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
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Arnold Schwarzenegger has launched a staunch defense of Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn after the U.S. veteran crashed out early in the women’s downhill event.
Vonn struck a gate just 13 seconds into her run in Cortina, Italy, on Sunday, with the 41-year-old suffering a broken leg that will require multiple surgeries.
Just nine days earlier, Vonn tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her left knee and had to be airlifted off the mountain. The decision to return to the slopes so soon after such a serious injury was one that was criticized in the run-up to events on Sunday.
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In an opinion piece for USA Today, Greg Graber suggested Vonn was "risking long-term physical repercussions" by competing and, at 41, was "way past" her prime.
Vonn fired back at Graber on X, branding his piece "very odd," adding that "this ageism stuff is getting really old."
"I came all this way for one final Olympics and I’m going to go and do my best, ACL or no. It’s as simple as that. And respectfully, if you don’t know the story, it might be best not to make assumptions," Vonn wrote.
Now, in the wake of her crash, opinion is divided on whether her efforts were an impressive feat of perseverance or a foolish endeavor given the circumstances.
One man who is firmly in Vonn’s corner, however, is Schwarzenegger. In a lengthy post shared to X, the action star and former governor of California spoke of his administration for the Winter Olympics and everyone who chooses to compete.
"The Olympics remind us of a core life lesson: greatness and heartbreak live right next door to each other," Schwarzenegger wrote. "You can’t find greatness without a few meetings with heartbreak and failure."
He then turned his attention to Vonn and what he described as her "inspirational comeback." Schwarzenegger wrote: "She’s 41, one knee is completely rebuilt, and now she went into the Olympics with a freshly-torn ACL. As storylines go, you can’t get any better. It is gutsy. It is brave. It is a little bit crazy."
Schwarzenegger went on to hit out at "all of the losers" who were "naysaying" her efforts. "What these people don’t understand, because they’ve never tried anything great, because they’ve never pushed themselves to the absolute edges of their limits, because they’ll never know their real potential, is that there is no such thing as risk-free greatness," he said.
Schwarzenegger acknowledged that “the haters were out in full force” after Vonn’s crash but he refused to acknowledge them any further.
Schwarzenegger went on to quote former President Teddy Roosevelt:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Schwarzenegger concluded that, while Vonn won’t go home with a medal, she will return "with the heart of a champion."
"She demonstrated that thriving means being comfortable on that razor’s edge of victory and defeat," he said. "She reminded us that coming up short in a worthy cause beats becoming one of those cold and timid souls. She showed us how to live, not just to exist. They don’t have a medal for that."
The International Ski and Snowboard Federation has already responded to backlash over the current rules that allowed Vonn to compete.
Vonn, meanwhile, has since broken her silence with a first social media post since the crash.
Newsweek has contacted Schwarzenegger for comment.
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