Category World News

Lindsey Vonn crashed and injured her left knee on Friday in her final downhill race before the Olympics, but said she still hopes to recover in time for the Milan Cortina Winter Games.

“This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics … but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback,” the 41-year-old American wrote on Instagram, hours after she was airlifted off the course for medical checks. “My Olympic dream is not over.”

Vonn was the third skier to crash in the World Cup race in Crans-Montana when she lost control while landing a jump and ended up tangled in the safety nets on the upper portion of the course.

She got up after receiving medical attention for about five minutes, seemingly in pain and using her poles to steady herself. Vonn then skied slowly to the finish line, stopping a couple of times on the way down and clutching her left knee.

“I crashed today in the Downhill race in Switzerland and injured my left knee. I am discussing the situation with my doctors and team and will continue to undergo further exams,” Vonn wrote in her Instagram post. “Thank you for all of the love and support. I will give more information when I have it.”

The race, which was held in difficult conditions with low visibility, was cancelled after Vonn’s crash.

The American, who was expected to be one of the biggest stars of the Games, limped into a tent for medical attention before being airlifted away by helicopter, dangling from a hoist cable with two people attending her.

Before she entered the tent, Vonn had an anxious expression on her face, and her eyes were closed during a long embrace with teammate Jacqueline Wiles, who was leading the race when it was cancelled.

“I know she hurt her knee, I talked to her,” International Ski and Snowboard Federation CEO Urs Lehmann told reporters in the finish area. “I don’t know if it’s really heavy and [if] she won’t miss the Olympics. Let’s wait for what the doctors are saying.”

Vonn made a stunning comeback last season at age 40 after nearly six years away from ski racing. Skiing with a partial titanium implant in her right knee, she has been the circuit’s leading downhiller this season with two victories and three other podium finishes in the five races.

Including super-G, Vonn had completed eight World Cup races this season and finished on the podium in seven of them. Her worst finish was fourth.

The crash occurred exactly a week before the Milan Cortina opening ceremony.

Vonn’s first Olympic race is the women’s downhill on February 8. She was also planning on competing in the super-G and the new team combined event at the Games.

Women’s skiing at the Olympics will be held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where Vonn holds the record of 12 World Cup wins.

Vonn was also planning on racing a super-G in Crans-Montana on Saturday in what would have been her final race before the Games.

Vonn was the sixth racer in Friday’s downhill and had registered the fastest time at the first checkpoint before landing a jump off-balance. She lifted her left arm and pole high into the air in an attempt to regain her balance. As she tried to brake, she got spun around and ended up in the nets.

Two other skiers had also crashed before her: Nina Ortlieb of Austria and Marte Monsen of Norway.

Ortlieb crashed on top in the same area as Vonn and Monsen hit the nets just before the finish area and had to be taken away in a sledge. The race was delayed after both of those crashes. But then two racers – Wiles and Corinne Suter, the Olympic champion, completed their runs.

Wiles barely could make the tight final left-hand turn that had tricked Monsen.

Romane Miradoli of France, who did complete her run as the second to start, said visibility was an issue, with snow falling.

“You can’t see,” Miradoli said, “and it’s bumpy everywhere.”

Asked if it was dangerous, Miradoli added, “We just couldn’t see well.”

Vonn has had numerous crashes in her career. One of her worst was at the 2013 world championships in Schladming, Austria, during a super-G that was also held in difficult conditions. Vonn then had to be airlifted off the course and tore apart her right knee. She returned the following season, got hurt again and missed the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The race started Friday in a subdued mood in Crans-Montana, which is coping with the trauma of a devastating fire in a bar in the early hours of New Year’s Day that killed 40 people and injured more than 100. A minute’s silence was observed before racing.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has said it will not provide Israeli authorities with the personal details of its staff working in Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian territory, citing concerns for staff safety and a lack of assurances over how the information would be used.

The decision on Friday follows criticism of MSF’s statement last week that it was prepared to share the names of its staff under strict conditions – a position that sparked concern among aid workers and rights advocates.

The organisation has since said it was unable to secure the guarantees it sought from Israeli authorities and has now ruled out sharing any staff data “under the current circumstances”, citing risks to its workers’ safety.

Israel demanded last year that several international aid organisations hand over detailed information about their staff, funding and operations as part of what it described as new “security and transparency standards”.

The move has been widely criticised by humanitarian groups, who say it risks further endangering aid workers in a context where Israel’s military has already killed more than 1,700 health workers since the start of its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, including at least 15 MSF employees.

Aid groups’ safety concerns

On January 1, Israel withdrew the licences of 37 aid organisations – including MSF, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee and Oxfam – saying they had failed to comply with the new requirements.

Under regulations issued by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs, organisations are required to submit sensitive information, including passport copies, CVs and the names of family members, including children.

The rules also allow Israel to bar organisations it accuses of inciting racism, denying Israel’s existence or the Holocaust, or supporting what it calls “an armed struggle by an enemy state or a terrorist organisation”.

MSF said that after months of engagement with Israeli authorities, it concluded that it could not safely comply with the demands.

It comes after MSF previously saying it was prepared to share a defined list of Palestinian and international staff names, subject to “clear parameters”, and only with the express agreement of those concerned.

The organisation said this position had been defined following consultation with Palestinian colleagues, with staff safety as the central consideration.

However, MSF said it was unable to secure the concrete assurances it requested.

“These included that any staff information would be used only for its stated administrative purpose and would not put colleagues at risk; that MSF would retain full authority over all human resource matters and management of medical humanitarian supplies, and that all communications defaming MSF and undermining staff safety would cease,” the aid group said in a statement.

Humanitarian organisations fear that such data could be used to target aid workers in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel has accused MSF – without providing evidence – of employing people who fought with Palestinian armed groups, part of a broader campaign. Israeli officials have also alleged, without proof, that United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups are linked to Hamas.

Aid organisations say such accusations have helped normalise attacks on humanitarian workers and undermine life-saving operations. According to the International Rescue Committee, Palestinians make up nearly one-fifth of all aid workers killed globally since records began.

‘Devastating impact’

MSF operates medical services across Gaza and the occupied West Bank, providing emergency and critical care. The organisation warned that expelling MSF from Gaza and the West Bank would have a “devastating impact” as Palestinians face winter conditions amid widespread destruction and urgent humanitarian needs.

Humanitarian conditions in Gaza remain dire, MSF said, with nearly 500 people killed since October, basic services largely destroyed and the health system “nearly non-functional”, with specialised care, such as burn treatment, unavailable.

In 2025, MSF said it provided 800,000 consultations, assisted one in three births and supported one in five hospital beds.

In June 2025, the United States had just struck Iranian nuclear sites, but rather than signal that the bombings were the opening salvo of a war between the US and Iran, President Donald Trump was quick to try to draw a line under the attack.

“Now is the time for peace,” was Trump’s message at the time.

Fast forward to the present day, and Trump is threatening an even bigger attack, and backing up the threat with a large-scale movement of US military assets, including an aircraft carrier, towards Iranian waters.

Trump says that these threats are his way of convincing the Iranians to agree to a deal – reported to include demands to effectively end Iran’s nuclear programme, limit its ballistic missile programme, and stop support for allies across the Middle East.

This is the Trump school of foreign policy: heavy on threats, and willingness to carry out calibrated and – at least initially – confined military action, designed to avoid US military entrenchment. At the same time, Trump says that he is not necessarily a supporter of regime change, but leaves the door open for it.

Trump actively cultivates an image that may – in a more disparaging way – be called the “madman theory” of foreign policy. Said to have originally been coined by former US President Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, the idea is for the enemy to question just how far you are willing to go, even if it seems irrational.

The US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 was one of the major examples of Trump acting this way during his first term. The unexpected killing of a senior state official of another country risked direct war and went against the opinions of many foreign policy experts. And yet Trump saw it as an act of deterrence and strength, and felt vindicated once it became clear the Iranians would not respond in kind.

In his second term, Trump has doubled down on this style of foreign policy, most notably in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. It now serves to give added heft to his current threats towards Iran.

The tactic serves two separate instincts within Trump and those around him – a desire to appear to be different from the neoconservatives who took the US into the 2003 war and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq, while simultaneously weakening any force in the region deemed to be a threat to the US or its chief Middle Eastern ally, Israel.

In essence, Trump wants to use the threat of force – and the occasional attack – to get short-term “wins” that make US enemies weaker, while steering clear of any protracted engagements.

Can Trump be successful?

How long that can work for depends on the size of the goal. When limited concessions are acceptable to both the US and the adversary, Trump’s threats can potentially lead to results in his favour.

The US president’s current threat to “no longer help” Iraq if the pro-Iranian politician Nouri al-Maliki becomes prime minister is a case in point.

Trump may be imposing his will on Iraq, but it is a threat backed not by war, but by potential economic consequences, therefore reducing the sense that Iraqi sovereignty is under attack. It also leaves the door open to other politicians the US deems acceptable to be prime minister, including the man currently in the job, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Al-Sudani is within the same wider Shia political alliance as al-Maliki, but is considered not to be as close to Iran and does not have the latter’s baggage. Keeping al-Sudani in power instead of al-Maliki, if that does indeed happen, is a relatively easy deal to make in return for avoiding any US economic wrath – and allows Trump to secure another “win”.

In Syria, US policy appears to be more focused on gradual withdrawal, because Trump feels like he has a partner in the group that he can work with in President Ahmed al-Sharaa. US policy in Syria is fixated on two goals: ensuring that ISIL (ISIS) does not strengthen, and guaranteeing no threat towards Israel from Syria.

At the same time, Trump has no qualms in abandoning the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a US ally now deemed surplus to requirements.

Instead, Gulf powers, led by Saudi Arabia, have said that they can vouch for the Syrian government and al-Sharaa, and for Trump, this is a way to largely wash his hands of at least one problem in a region he has long maintained is prone to endless wars.

Increasing complications

In Lebanon and Gaza, Trump has attempted to use the threat of military force to achieve two goals: an end to all-out war and for anti-US and anti-Israel forces to agree to disarm.

Trump’s policy goals in Lebanon and Gaza are less maximalist than in Iran, but achieving them will be more complex than the relatively moderate concessions demanded of Iraq.

In both Lebanon and Gaza, the US has stepped in after devastating Israeli wars and positioned itself as a peacemaker, despite backing Israel in both of the conflicts.

And yet peace is conditional on armed groups – Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza – disarming completely. During the gradual negotiations in both instances, the US has presented itself as a restraining force on Israel, preventing a return to all-out war, but allowed Israel to carry out regular small-scale attacks that serve as reminders of what Israel and the US could carry out if their demands are not met.

But full disarmament is a bitter pill to swallow for both Hezbollah and Hamas.

In Syria, Hezbollah and its supporters would see this as accepting defeat in the fight against the US and Israel – a catastrophic blow for an organisation that sees itself as a resistance movement to those two powers.

Trump’s “Board of Peace“, the body established to oversee the administration of Gaza, is more palatable to Hamas to a point, but similarly, the full disarmament being demanded of the group will take away one of the central elements of its self-identity, even as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land continues with no end in sight.

It is therefore likely that both Hezbollah and Hamas believe that agreeing to the demand to fully disarm is an existential matter, opening the door to a future breakdown of negotiations.

Long-term consequences

Iran’s past experience with Trump and perception of its own existential threat may test the limits of Trump’s approach to foreign policy.

Trump insists that he wants a deal, but the Iranian government is signalling that it simply does not believe him, based on what it believes to be his duplicitous previous attacks during negotiations, and his willingness to abduct foreign leaders as a means of projecting US power.

The Iranians appear to see few off-ramps, and based on their experience in the past year, now regard concessions as merely inviting further pressure.

The Islamic Republic – or at least elements within it – sees that its own survival is at stake. So now, for the US and Trump, it is the other side that may have nothing to lose. In these circumstances, can the “madman” foreign policy approach work?