MILAN, Italy — With a ghost in her ear and no fear in her heart, Lindsey Vonn is hellbent on fulfilling a dream that would sound like an absolute nightmare to most any other 41-year-old woman on the planet.

Skiing down a mountain at 80 mph?

That’s crazy.

But doing it on a trashed knee patched together by chewing gum and baling wire?

That’s oh-so-very Vonn.

She was born to go faster than the legal speed limit, at G forces wilder than any roller-coaster ride.

“Hold on to your chewing gum,” Vonn said Tuesday during a press conference in Cortina d’Amprezzo.

Well, I held my head in disbelief when the grande dame of American skiing shook the Italian Alps with the shocking news she intends to compete this weekend in the Olympic downhill, a scant nine days after a race crash shredded her left knee with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament.

For almost anybody else, this would qualify as madness.

For Vonn, it’s another day at the office.

“I’ve never been afraid of much in my life,” Vonn said. “That’s why I’m a downhiller. I like risk. I like going fast. I like pushing myself to the limit.”

Throughout a legendary career that has earned her 84 World Cup victories, three Olympic medals and titanium hardware in her right knee, Vonn’s need for speed is matched only by her fondness for the dramatic.

After injuries pushed Vonn in retirement back in 2019, with the sober admission her body was so beat up it made “no sense” to continue racing competitively, she found it impossible to do a complete flush of the adrenaline rush only skiing could provide.

She dated and got engaged to longtime NHL star P.K. Subban, but the romance didn’t last. Her mother, Linda, passed away in 2022 after battling ALS.

Maybe Vonn needed skiing to fill the void. But her return to competitive racing at Copper Mountain 14 months ago has proved to be much more than a vanity project.

She won two downhill competitions on the World Cup circuit this season, with five other finishes on the podium. Then, on the final race before the Olympics, in dangerous, low-visibility conditions on a renowned Swiss mountain, Vonn lost her balance on a jump, tumbled in a backward crash-landing so hard that any recreational skier could feel sympathetic pain in the knee while watching Vonn be airlifted to a nearby hospital.

Although the injury has reduced her from gold-medal favorite to a giant question mark, she remains defiantly undaunted. 

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Vonn said.

But it could be her last.

And now you know why sitting out this downhill race was never an option.

“Surgery hasn’t been discussed,” Vonn said. “It’s not really on my radar screen right now. The Olympics are the only thing I’m thinking about.”

In a country where at least half the population shudders at the mere thought of snow, Vonn has made herself must-see TV.

And she loves the big stage almost as much as NBC, which spends billions of dollars to be the U.S. broadcast home of the Olympics, needs Vonn to be a star.

“It’s hard for me to lose faith in myself … and it doesn’t matter to me if everyone thinks maybe I can’t do this with no ACL,” Vonn said.

Five years ago, quarterback Tom Brady did a very GOAT thing by winning the last of his seven NFL championship rings at age 43.

But in the early hours of this Super Bowl Sunday, Vonn will stand on a busted knee at the start gate of the Olympic downhill and look fear square in the eye.

“It’s a pretty damn good comeback,” Vonn said, “if I can pull it off.”

She did not cry when the MRI revealed her ACL was spaghetti.

Vonn, however, did shed a tear on her way to the chic Italian resort of Cortina, when she made a pilgrimage to the gravesite of Erich Sailer, who died in August only a few weeks short of his 100th birthday.

Sailer coached Vonn when she was a child prodigy on the slopes of Buck Hill in Minnesota. This Yoda of the snow is buried just outside Innsbruck, Austria, beneath hills that can wrap his memory in a warm alpenglow.

In her hour of need, Vonn paid a visit to Sailer’s memorial because a great coach can touch an athlete’s heart long after that last training session.

“I miss him. I know exactly what he would say to me right now. And it definitely gives me additional hope,” said Vonn, heeding the advice of a friendly ghost in her ear.

“He would say, ‘It’s only 90 seconds. What’s 90 seconds in a lifetime? It’s nothing. You can do it.’”

Truth be known, nobody knows if Vonn can.

She could win a medal and make the country get misty-eyed with red, white and blue pride.

Or she could ragdoll down the mountain in a crash almost too frightening to watch.

Risking it all at 80 mph. Dancing on the razor’s edge. That’s oh-so-Vonn. Fearless. To the end.