Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn will be out for the season after suffering a serious knee injury during a crash at the Alpine World Championships in Schladming, Austria Tuesday during the super-G.
Vonn lost her balance on a tough landing, lost her ski, and slid off course into a gate before finally coming to a stop. She was checked out by a doctor on the hill for more than ten minutes, and then airlifted to a Salzburg hospital for further evaluation.
U.S. team medical director Kyle Wilkens confirmed that Vonn tore her ACL and MCL and suffered a lateral tibial plateau fracture. She’ll require surgery and be out the rest of the season, but is expected to be back for the next World Cup season, and for the Sochi Olympics next February.
Vonn wrote in Monday’s Denver Post that the course had been closed to all skiers and coaches because of snow conditions, and that no one on her team had been able to evaluate the course as of Monday:
“We were here last year for the World Cup finals, so I feel like I know the hill pretty well, but it always feels a little awkward when you don’t get a chance to free ski the hill before you race. It’s tricky to know the terrain when all you have to go on is course inspection the morning of the race.”
The Vancouver gold medalist was trailing World Cup points leader Tina Maze of Slovenia, who won the event, by only 0.12 seconds before the crash. The race had been postponed for about three-and-a-half hours earlier in the day due to fog, and continued after a fifteen minute delay.
(NBC’s Alex Goldberger is in Austria for the event and contributed to this report.)
Here’s a video of the crash:
