Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) (AFP) – Lindsey Vonn is set on Tuesday to give an update on whether she is fit to compete at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics after a knee injury put her participation in doubt. The US skiing great’s Olympic comeback, at the age of 41 and with a titanium implant in her right knee, is set to be one of the storylines of the Games. But she may yet have to drop out after losing her balance and crashing into the netting in the World Cup downhill in Crans Montana on Friday and damaging her other knee.
Vonn will answer the question that is hanging over the lead-up to the Olympics in a press conference with her American teammates scheduled for 4:00 pm (1500 GMT). The women’s alpine skiing programme gets underway with the downhill in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Sunday. Vonn said she had injured her left knee in the heavy fall in Switzerland but insisted that her “Olympic dream is not over”. The dreadful conditions in Crans Montana and two other crashes led to the race being stopped after just six competitors attempted to find their way down the piste.
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“This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics…but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback,” wrote Vonn on social media. Vonn’s phenomenal form this season, against some skiers who are nearly half her age like Germany’s rising star Emma Aicher, put her in a great position to add to her three Olympic medals. The 2010 downhill Olympic champion has finished on the podium in every World Cup downhill race, including two victories in St. Moritz and Zauchensee, and has claimed two more top-three finishes in the super-G.
As well as the Olympic downhill, she is also scheduled to compete in the team combined event on February 10 and the super-G two days later. Her successes have been all the more remarkable because she only returned to alpine skiing in November 2024, five years after announcing the end of a stellar career which had taken her body to its very limit. She underwent surgery earlier in 2024 to partially replace her right knee following persistent pain.
But it could end up being her other knee which denies Vonn the chance of breaking her own record for the oldest Olympic medal winner in women’s alpine skiing. Vonn established that record by taking bronze in the downhill at the PyeongChang Winter Games eight years ago.
© 2024 AFP
