Jan 2 : Austria’s 2022 Olympic slalom silver medallist Katharina Liensberger is set to miss the Milano Cortina Games after suffering a serious knee injury in a training crash.
The Austrian ski federation said Liensberger would have surgery later on Friday after medical examinations revealed a fracture of the tibial plateau, a torn meniscus and a medial collateral ligament injury in her right knee.
Austrian media said the 28-year-old slalom specialist’s season was over after the crash in St Michael, with the Olympics starting in Italy next month.
Liensberger won a team gold and slalom silver in Beijing and was slalom world champion in 2021. She won a slalom bronze at last year’s championships on home snow in Saalbach.
At Cortina she would have been up against American great Mikaela Shiffrin, the most successful World Cup skier of all time who has won the last six World Cup slaloms and five this season.
The women are racing in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, this weekend with a giant slalom on Saturday and slalom on Sunday.
Liensberger adds to a list of top women’s skiers to have suffered serious injuries in the run-up to the Olympics.
Three Swiss Olympic champions – Michelle Gisin, Lara Gut-Behrami and Corinne Suter – have been sidelined in training incidents with the first two ruled out of the Games.