{"id":578334,"date":"2026-02-09T21:47:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/578334\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T21:47:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:47:21","slug":"did-torn-acl-cause-lindsey-vonns-crash-ski-experts-say-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/578334\/","title":{"rendered":"Did torn ACL cause Lindsey Vonn’s crash? Ski experts say no"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Lindsey Vonn\u2019s<\/a> downhill run lasted 13 seconds. The question of whether she should have been racing at all with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament<\/a> will be debated for years.<\/p>\n

What was going on in the mind of the legendary 41-year-old ski racer, whose violent crash resulted in her being airlifted<\/a> off the course and in surgery hours later Sunday with, at minimum, a fractured left leg?<\/p>\n

Was it a calculated risk or stubborn foolishness?<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s so tough mentally that as long as physically she was OK, she was going to do it,\u201d said Stacey Cook, a retired racer and Vonn\u2019s former teammate on the U.S. Ski Team. \u201cI think the harder part is wrapping your mind around putting yourself at risk again. And that\u2019s never been an issue for her. She\u2019s always been willing to, like, put it on the line\u2026 She was always the, like, extra fearless one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"American <\/p>\n

American Lindsey Vonn completed an Alpine ski downhill training session in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, Italy, without incident on Friday, two days before she crashed.<\/p>\n

(Marco Trovati \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Cook said, consider what was at stake.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt isn\u2019t common in everyday life to go another week with an ACL injury, putting yourself at risk,\u201d Cook said. \u201cIt\u2019s always common to take care of it right away. But there\u2019s more on the line for the Olympics than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Neal ElAttrache<\/a>, who lives in Los Angeles and is a preeminent sports surgeon, doesn\u2019t count Vonn among his current patients but he has scoped her knee twice to remove scar tissue. He\u2019s also in contact with members of her medical team, as he trained Dr. Tom Hackett, a renowned orthopedic surgeon at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., who works with Vonn to manage her knee health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t amateur people who were helping her make this decision,\u201d said ElAttrache, who specializes in sports medicine at Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic and is renowned for his treatment and research of knee, shoulder and elbow injuries.<\/p>\n

ElAttrache said the typical risk-reward calculation was not in play.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knew going into it that there was only one way that this was going to come out good, and that\u2019s if she not only made it through the race, but performed well,\u201d he said. \u201cIf she didn\u2019t ski a Lindsey Vonn race and was at least competitive at the top of the leaderboard, it would be considered a failure. There wasn\u2019t a lot of upside, except for Lindsey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This <\/p>\n

This combination of images shows American Lindsey Vonn crashing during an Alpine ski women\u2019s downhill race at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, Italy, on Sunday.<\/p>\n

(Jacquelyn Martin \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Vonn\u2019s crash came near the top of the Olimpia delle Tofane course, where she had won 12 World Cup races during her storied career, six in downhill and six in super-G. She was on the podium there a total of 20 times before these Olympics.<\/p>\n

Cook said the first turn on the course, which Vonn was traversing when she got into trouble, is actually much steeper falling away from the skier than it looks on TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like dipping into a double-black-diamond and trying to come back out of it for a second,\u201d Cook said. \u201cWhat the racer sees in that section is way different than how it looks on TV. The way it feels is a lot different.\u201d <\/p>\n

The racer is traversing the hill perpendicular to the fall line, almost moving in an upward direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very tough turn,\u201d Cook said. \u201cAnd the next gate, you can\u2019t see it until you\u2019re pretty much on top of it. You might as well put on a blindfold because you can\u2019t see anything in front of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said you have to be there to truly understand the difficulty of negotiating the turn.<\/p>\n

\"American <\/p>\n

American Lindsey Vonn crashes during the Alpine downhill during the Winter Olympics in Cortina d\u2019Ampezzo, Italy, on Sunday.<\/p>\n

(Handout \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the average fan, you would stand on top of it and just go, \u2018Um, no. Not doing that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

ElAttrache has studied video of the crash and said there\u2019s no obvious indication the knee in question caused Vonn to fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unclear that her fall was due to an instability event in her knee \u2026 and when you look at it, you don\u2019t see that she was weight-bearing on that knee and that she had an instability event that led to the fall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

An executive from the International Ski and Snowboard Federation told reporters Monday that Vonn was simply \u201cincredibly unlucky\u201d in the crash. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a one in a 1,000,\u201d said Johan Eliasch, FIS president. \u201cShe got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air in the gate and started rotating. No one can recover from that, unless you do a 360. \u2026 This is something which is part of ski racing. It\u2019s a dangerous sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vonn\u2019s father told the Associated Press she is being supported by her family, is receiving great medical care and knows how to tolerate pain. Alan Kildow, a former ski racer who taught his daughter to ski, said he hopes Vonn retires, but he didn\u2019t blame her knee injury for the crash.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to her had nothing to do with the ACL issue on her left leg. Nothing,\u201d Kildow told the AP. \u201cShe had demonstrated that she was able to function at a very high level with the two downhill training runs. \u2026 And she had been cleared by high level physicians to ski.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cThere are times sometimes in any race, but especially in downhill, where you have to take a little speed off. You can give yourself a little bit more leeway on the line so you don\u2019t put yourself in a questionable position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vonn had a chance to compete on one of her favorite courses and cap her career with a meaningful Olympic moment. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was not about proving anything to anyone,\u201d said Dr. Armando Gonzalez, Vonn\u2019s mental coach, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times two days before the fateful race. \u201cIt was more about defying the odds that were placed against her and being a competitor that always found a way, no matter what, no matter if it was pain, no matter if it was noise from the outside, she\u2019d always find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

ElAttrache made a comparison between Vonn and star NFL receiver Odell Beckham Jr., who was playing on a compromised ACL when the Rams won the Super Bowl<\/a> in the 2021 season. Beckham understood the risks, but was somewhat at an advantage as a receiver because he knew the routes he would be running, as opposed to being a defensive back who has to react abruptly to what the player he\u2019s covering is doing.<\/p>\n

In the first half of the Super Bowl against Cincinnati, Beckham suffered a complete ACL tear<\/a> and was incapacitated.<\/p>\n

Often, ElAttrache said, an ultra-elite athlete will apply a different calculus when deciding whether to play with an injury such as a compromised ACL.<\/p>\n

He said Vonn, having endured multiple injuries and surgeries to both knees, understood the risks to her own body the way few athletes do. And whereas most skiers would be hamstrung by a fear of injury that could endanger their career, Vonn is an established icon willing to accept risks others might not. In short, it might not make sense to many, but it made sense to the battle-tested Vonn, who has \u201cearned the right\u201d to make those types of decisions.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, she had performed well on the same course the day before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have somebody like her, who\u2019s earned the right to try it, if that\u2019s what she really wants to do, she was going into that race as one of the best skiers on the U.S. team,\u201d ElAttrache said. \u201cShe was driving that ship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Lindsey Vonn\u2019s downhill run lasted 13 seconds. The question of whether she should have been racing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":578335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[10],"tags":[53915,91366,6145,4903,251007,251010,19176,84514,114599,2444,62,251008,251009,1399,67,132,68,249857,14164],"class_list":["post-578334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-acl","tag-calculated-risk","tag-course","tag-crash","tag-elattrache","tag-fall-line","tag-injury","tag-knee","tag-lindsey-vonn","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-sports","tag-stacey-cook","tag-storied-career","tag-top","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-vonn","tag-way"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116042874818892338","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}