2025 was the year athletes did not want to stick to the rules. The script said retirement was final, injuries were full stops, and breaks meant fading away. But the athletes had different things in mind.

Here are our top picks of the athletes who made 2025 a year of unforgettable comebacks:

Lindsey Vonn

Back in 2019, Lindsey Vonn ended her 18-year skiing career after constant battles with injuries, especially to her right knee. She left the sport as one of the most successful skiers in history, with 82 World Cup wins and three Olympic medals to her name. For almost five years, Vonn stayed away from racing. Most fans assumed her competitive days were over. But in November 2024, at 41, she surprised the sports world by announcing her return from retirement.

A partial knee replacement surgery had eased the pain that once forced her to stop. It gave her a chance to train again without the same limitations. Her comeback officially began on December 7, 2024, at the FIS Fall Festival in Copper Mountain, Colorado.

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Soon after, she returned to the World Cup circuit, racing in St. Moritz and St. Anton in late 2024 and early 2025. Her results improved steadily. Then, on December 12, 2025, Vonn rewrote history. She won the women’s downhill race at the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in St. Moritz, Switzerland, becoming the oldest skier ever to win a World Cup race and several podium finishes, which secured her a spot on the U.S. team for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina.

Jordan Chiles

After taking a break from UCLA gymnastics in 2024, Jordan Chiles put everything into preparing for the Paris Olympics. In Paris, she helped Team USA win gold in the women’s team final. She also made it to the floor exercise final, where she first placed third and earned a bronze medal after a score inquiry. But the result was later changed when the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled the inquiry was submitted just seconds late.

Jordan Chiles was moved to fifth place and asked to return the medal. Despite this setback, Chiles committed to returning to UCLA for the 2025 season. She rejoined the Bruins team in December 2024 and competed throughout 2025 with strong results. She earned perfect 10s on floor and uneven bars, brought home another uneven bars crown, and earned co-Big Ten floor honors with a faultless routine.

She even led UCLA to a second-place finish at the NCAA Championships, where she earned the highest all-around score of the meet and multiple All-America honors. Now in her final NCAA year, Jordan has only one target in sight: to help her UCLA Bruins NCAA Championship next season.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce entered the 2024 Paris Olympics aiming to end her Olympic career on a high note. She advanced through the first round of the women’s 100m and was set to run in the semifinals, but she got injured in the warm-up and had to pull out of the race, thereby ending her Olympic career.

Instead of retiring completely, Fraser-Pryce returned to play in 2025, saying that she had unfinished business and that she wanted to play at the top level one more time.

She then proceeded to the Jamaican National Championships in June 2025, where she finished third in the 100m and secured a spot on the Jamaican team to compete in the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in the same year. It was also her last home soil race in Kingston, where she ran a solid 10.91 seconds.

Her final global stage came at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo. Fraser-Pryce raced in both the women’s 100 metres and the 4×100 metres relay for Jamaica. In 100m final, she finished sixth in the final with a time of around 11.03 seconds. And in the relay, the Jamaican team finished second with a time of 41.79 seconds, just behind the United States. That silver medal became Fraser-Pryce’s final World Championships medal.

And soon after, in October 2025, she officially announced her retirement from track and field.

Alysa Liu

Alysa Liu had stepped away from competitive figure skating for nearly two years after the 2022 World Championships, where she won a bronze medal in women’s singles and then surprised many by retiring at age 16.

At the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships in Boston, Liu returned and delivered one of the most outstanding comebacks in the sport. She led the women’s field after the short program with a personal best score and then skated a powerful free skate to MacArthur Park, landing seven clean triple jumps and earning a total of 222.97 points. That win also made her the first American woman in 19 years to take the world championship.

This wasn’t just a comeback. It was a historic event that solidified Liu as one of the top American skaters and brought her to the forefront as a major medal contender heading into the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Following a frightening crash on November 30, 2024, during a giant slalom in Killington, Vermont, Mikaela Shiffrin’s future in skiing appeared uncertain. She had torn her oblique muscles and suffered a deep puncture wound to her abdomen, injuries that kept her out of competition for months and hindered her training.

Beyond the physical healing, Shiffrin candidly spoke about struggling with post-traumatic stress, dealing with intrusive thoughts and flashbacks of the crash, and facing mental blocks when trying to push her speed again.

For the first months of 2025, she focused on rehab and rebuilding both her body and mind. By January, Shiffrin returned to the slopes at the World Cup slalom in Courchevel, France. She placed 10th while still recovering.

As 2025 progressed, her confidence grew. She steadily returned to competition while continuing therapy to address PTSD. Her hard work paid off. With multiple victories in slalom and leading the discipline standings, Shiffrin officially secured her spot on Team USA for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Akani Simbine

Akani Simbine has long been one of the fastest sprinters in the world, but major championships often left him just short of the podium. He placed fifth in the 2016 Rio Olympics and fourth in both the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Olympics in the 100m with a national record of 9.82 seconds in Paris, just 0.03 seconds short of third place. Those close calls were now a vexing series of almost close, but no medal.

However, 2025 became a breakthrough year for Simbine. In March, he won bronze in the men’s 60m at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China. Clocking 6.53 seconds in the final, he finished behind Britain’s Jeremiah Azu and Australia’s Lachlan Kennedy. It was his first individual global medal at a major championship.

On the outdoor circuit, Simbine hit top form early. At the Botswana Golden Grand Prix in April, he ran 9.90 seconds into a headwind, which was the fastest legal time in the world at that point and extended his streak of running under 10 seconds in the 100m to 11 straight years.

At the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, he made it into the men’s 100m final, showing again that he can compete with the very best. In the final, he finished seventh with a time of around 10.04 seconds, behind the likes of Jamaica’s Oblique Seville, Kishane Thompson, and Noah Lyles. Although he missed out on an individual medal, making the final was a strong result in an extremely competitive field.

Trayvon Bromell

Trayvon Bromell has battled some of the toughest injuries of any top sprinter this decade. His struggles began back in 2016 at the Rio Olympics, when he tore his Achilles tendon during the 4×100 relay and had to be taken off the track in a wheelchair. The injury kept him out for most of 2017 and 2018 as he recovered from surgeries and rehabilitation. And then in 2019, he suffered a serious hip injury.

Then, in 2024, Bromell faced another setback. He pulled up with an adductor injury in Italy in May, forcing him to miss the U.S. Olympic Trials and ending his chance to compete in the Paris Olympics that summer. He spent several months sidelined, focusing on healing and rebuilding his strength. But 2025 marked a return to form.

Early in the season, he ran 9.91 seconds in the 100m, signaling he was close to his best again. But then, on June 6, 2025, at the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea Diamond League meet in Rome, Bromell ran 9.84 seconds – his fastest time in several years and the world-leading mark for 2025 at that point.

He capped the year by competing at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. While he didn’t make the 100m final, advancing through the rounds and racing at that level after missing nearly all of 2024 was itself a major accomplishment.