“Compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck,” she explained, “and it basically crushes everything in the compartment so all the muscle and nerves and tendons—it all kind of dies. And Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated.”

“I always talk about everything happens for a reason,” Lindsey added, “but if I hadn’t torn my ACL, which I would have torn anyways with this crash, if I hadn’t done that, Tom wouldn’t have been there, he wouldn’t have been able to save my leg.”

While Lindsey’s time in the 2026 Olympics was cut short, keep reading for more athletes who made history during the Winter Games.