Lindsey Vonn says she has no regrets after breaking leg in serious crash while competing in Winter Olympics
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
(CNN) — Lindsey Vonn said she has no regrets over her decision to compete in the Winter Olympics on a “completely ruptured” ACL following her devastating crash that put an end to her Olympic comeback.
“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail (sic), it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches,” she wrote on Instagram.
“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”
Vonn was referencing the crash she suffered in Crans-Montana on the World Cup circuit on January 30. In that race, Vonn tore her ACL in her left knee and the injury threw her participation in these Games into doubt.
Still, she had completed two training runs ahead of the final and seemed to believe she could still compete at the highest level.
The American burst out of the start in Sunday’s final but caught a gate with her right arm after just 13 seconds, sending her tumbling down the slope to a halt. The 41-year-old was then airlifted off the Olimpia delle Tofane piste as the crowd stood to applaud her.
“Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly,” she said.
“While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget.”
She added, “Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport.”
“And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is the also the beauty of life; we can try.”
“I tried. I dreamt. I jumped. I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying. I believe in you, just as you believed in me.”
Earlier in the day, International Ski Federation (FIS) president Johan Eliasch defended Vonn’s decision to compete.
“It was very unfortunate, she was unlucky. It’s sort of 1 in 1000, but it does happen. She caught the gate, got stuck with the gate and started rotating and she was in the air, and there is no way to recover from such an impact unless you do a 360, so really bad luck I’m afraid,” he said. “All I can say is she’s been working so, so hard for the comeback and won two races so it’s incredible what she has achieved.”
Amid questions from commentators and the public that the FIS perhaps had a duty of care to intervene in Vonn’s competing in the Olympics, given the risks involved, Eliasch, who has known Vonn for over 20 years, was resolute that it was no one’s decision to make but her own.
“That should definitely be the athlete’s job to decide for themselves on the day, and I mean, most of the athletes have injuries of some kind – it’s just ski racing, you live with it, you push through the pain, and you compete,” he told CNN.
“And in this case, I don’t think the injury that she sustained a week earlier had anything whatsoever to do with this. She was definitely fit to race, and what happened (catching and getting stuck on the gate) was just very bad luck.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
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