Despite more than an hour delay for fog, Lindsey Vonn cleared a major hurdle before Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill with a successful training run in Cortina on Friday, exactly one week after she tore the ACL in her left knee and was airlifted off a mountain in Switzerland.
Completing the training run was not only considered a key test of the knee, it was a requirement if the 41-year old Vonn was going to compete for a fourth Olympic medal 16 years after winning gold in Vancouver. One of Vonn’s three opportunities to complete a training run was eliminated Thursday when officials cancelled it due to heavy snow and dangerous conditions.
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Wearing a brace on her left knee, Vonn navigated the Olympia delle Tofane slope relatively cleanly in 1:40.33 — a time that placed her 11th out of the 43 finishers.
Vonn did not speak after her run, but her coach, Aksel Lund Svindal did.
“She was smart, she didn’t go all in,” Svindal said. “She made a mistake on the bottom, but the rest looked like good skiing. No big risk.
“To me, it looked symmetrical. I didn’t see any differences (between her) right and left (side) and that’s what we were looking for today, so it was good.”
Vonn is on the list of participants for Saturday’s training even though she needed to complete only one to qualify for Sunday’s downhill.
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Asked if he thinks she can compete for a medal — or even win gold on Sunday — Svindal said it’s possible.
“I think she can, because there were reserves today,” he said. “She looks symmetrical. You’ve seen earlier this season, when she skis well, she can win.
“From what I saw today, I think she can. It’s gonna be hard, but she could possibly bring that on Sunday.”
While somewhat unprecedented for an athlete to even attempt competing at an Olympic level with an injury that typically requires reconstructive surgery and a minimum nine-month rehabilitation period, Vonn said in a press conference earlier this week that she had minimal pain and swelling in the knee and that it felt stable. Those assertions were backed up by a training video she posted to Instagram on Thursday showing Vonn progressing through a high-intensity workout that included weighted squats and box jumps.
She posted another social media message before Friday’s run with a smiling selfie and mountains in the background with a caption: “Nothing makes me happier!”
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The successful training run should allay some fears that Vonn was too ambitious in trying to compete at these Winter Games. Though orthopedic experts interviewed by Yahoo Sports stressed that a normal person could not and should not attempt to do what Vonn is doing, Dr. Yair David Kissin of the Hackensack University Medical Center said it was a “great example that every case needs to be individualized.”
He added: “It brings tears to my eyes as a sports medicine ACL doctor, a knee doctor, that she can attain that level of athleticism, of performance, after going through what she’s gone through. Nobody sees the work she put in. You have to respect and appreciate that.”
The fog rolled in roughly midway through the course Friday after just five competitors and only a few minutes before Vonn’s scheduled run, almost eliminating visibility during a key section of the course. Vonn seemed to remain in good spirits through the delay, at one point practicing dances with her American teammates.
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Perhaps no one is more comfortable on this Italian slope than Vonn. It’s where she claimed her first World Cup podium, as well as her 63rd victory, the one that gave her more downhill titles than any woman, ever. In all, she’s won 12 World Cup events at Cortina, and it’s a big reason why she came out of retirement to compete in these Olympic Games.
“I don’t think I would have tried this comeback if the Olympics weren’t in Cortina,” Vonn said prior to these Olympics. “If it had been anywhere else, I would probably say it’s not worth it. But for me, there’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back, and it’s pulled me back one last time.”