AJ Ginnis, the 2023 World Championships slalom silver medalist for Greece, will miss the rest of the Alpine skiing season due to knee surgery.
Ginnis, a 30-year-old who formerly skied for the U.S., placed 19th in his most recent World Cup race, a slalom on Nov. 24, before the surgery, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
“I’m extremely disappointed that my season is over before it even began,” Ginnis wrote in an email. “Big thanks to my team and sponsors for the continued support and I’ll be ready to go for the Olympic season.”
Ginnis said after the surgery that a bone spur was trimmed down, a lose broken bone was cleaned up and the fabella bone was removed.
In 2023, Ginnis became what is believed to be Greece’s first world championships medalist in any Winter Olympic program event.
He took silver in the slalom behind Norwegian Henrik Kristoffersen in Courchevel, France, and was congratulated by the Greek prime minister.
Before that, Ginnis had one career top-10 finish in the World Cup — a runner-up in the last race before those worlds.
He had a best finish last season of ninth and ranked 26th on the World Cup in the slalom.
Ginnis previously raced for the U.S. at the 2017 Worlds, then was dropped from the national team after the 2017-18 season following several injuries and a best World Cup finish of 26th at the time.
He switched to his birth nation of Greece, where he had learned to ski at Mount Parnassus, a 2 ½-hour drive from Athens. He moved to Austria at age 12 and then Vermont three years after that.
Ginnis previously had at least six knee surgeries and tore an ACL in summer 2021, ruling him out of the 2022 Winter Games.
He thought he was done with ski racing when he went to Beijing to work the 2022 Olympics for NBC. That experience lit a fire.
“When I came back, I told myself, my goal is to go into the next Olympic cycle being a medal contender,” he said at the 2023 Worlds. “Fighting back from injuries, getting cut from teams, trying to fundraise for what we’re doing now. ... This is a dream come true on every level.”
