Lindsey Vonn, swaddled in her Team USA parka, sat down in front of a microphone in a press room in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and calmly detailed how, a few days earlier, she had obliterated her left knee.
“I completely ruptured my ACL. I also have bone bruising, which is a common injury when you tear your ACL, plus some meniscal damage,’’ she said with near clinical detachment.
And then with equal deliberateness and calm, Vonn explained how she intends to ski in Sunday’s Olympic downhill competition – on a left knee with a severed ligament, and a right knee reconstructed in titanium.
The two things do not go together. Or should not go together. Torquing and turning down a mountain at 85 miles per hour without an ACL – its sole anatomical purpose is to connect the femur to the tibia and protect the bones from shifting – is, at best, not recommended and, at worst, slightly reckless.
Except to express surprise that the 2010 Olympic gold medalist is even considering this would be to misunderstand Lindsey Vonn in her entirety. She has made a career of taking risks and defying logic, her shredded body the victim of her determination.
This is not her first ACL tear. It is her third, to go along with a fractured ankle, knee, humerus, microfractures in her forearm, tibial fractures in her leg, a torn LCL, two torn MCLs and an acute facet dysfunction of her back – better known as debilitating spasms brought on by trauma.
Since she first popped her boots into a pair of bindings, Vonn has known one speed: Go.
She is not about to stop now.
Read more about Vonn’s improbable comeback here.
