Lindsey Vonn's choice to race Olympic downhill on injured knee questioned after crash

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy — The fallout from Lindsey Vonn's devastating crash in the Olympic downhill included a key question: Given her severely injured left knee, should she have even been allowed on a course that is dangerous even to perfectly healthy skiers?

The resounding answer on social media was no. The answer from the skiing community was yes.

Nine days before Sunday's crash, the 41-year-old American ruptured the ACL in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.

When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.

"I firmly believe that this has to be decided by the individual athlete,'' FIS president Johan Eliasch said Monday in Bormio. ''And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries on her body better than anybody else. And if you look around here today with all the athletes, the athletes yesterday, every single athlete has a small injury of some kind.

''What is also important for people to understand, that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky. It was a one in a 1,000,'' Eliasch added. ''She 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. … This is something which is part of ski racing. It's a dangerous sport.''

The Italian hospital in Treviso where Vonn was being treated said late Sunday she had undergone surgery to repair a broken left leg. The U.S. Ski Team has said only that Vonn ''sustained an injury, but is in stable condition and in good hands with a team of American and Italian physicians.''

Pierre Ducrey, the sports director for the International Olympic Committee, noted Vonn was able to train and had experts counseling her decision.

''So from that point of view, I don't think we can say that she should or shouldn't have participated. This decision was really hers and her team to take,'' he said. ''She made the decision and unfortunately it led to the injury, but I think it's really the way that the decision gets made for every athlete that participates to the downhill.''

Onlookers on social media wondered if Vonn's ruptured ACL could have played a factor in her crash near the top of the Olympia delle Tofana course, where she has a World Cup record 12 wins. That maybe, on a healthy left knee, she would not have clipped a gate and been able to stave off a crash.

''Totally incorrect,'' Vonn's teammate Keely Cashman — who was knocked unconsious in a serious crash five years ago — said Monday. ''People that don't know ski racing don't really understand what happened yesterday. She hooked her arm on the gate, which twisted her around. She was going probably 70 miles an hour, and so that twists your body around. That has nothing to do with her ACL, nothing to with her knee. I think a lot of people are ridiculing that, and a lot people don't (know) what's going on."

The hours after her crash was filled with opinions, mostly of the second-guessing nature. Like, should someone have intervened?

Brignone suffered multiple fractures in her tibial plateau and fibula bone in her left leg during a crash in April and made it back to compete in the Olympic downhill — finishing 10th.

American downhiller Kyle Negomir echoed that thought.

''Lindsey's a grown woman, and the best speed skier to ever do this sport. If she made her decision, I think she should absolutely be allowed to take that risk,'' Negomir said. ''She's obviously good enough that she's capable of pulling it off. Just because it happened to not pan out yesterday doesn't mean that it definitely wasn't a possibility that she could just crush it and have a perfect run.''

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Graham reported from Bormio. AP Sports Writer Will Graves in Treviso and Daniella Matar in Milan contributed to this report.