Lindsey Vonn will not compete in Sochi Olympics

Source: Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, CNN

By Barry Svrluga

January 7 at 8:45 am

Lindsey Vonn, the Olympic champion who is the best American skier in history, will miss next month’s Sochi Games following the latest injury to her right knee, which will require surgery.

Vonn, 29, was intent on making a comeback from an incident in which she tore two ligaments and broke a bone in her right leg last February. But a pair of setbacks — the first in November while training in Colorado, the second while racing Dec. 21 in Val D’Isere, France — have left her with a sprained knee ligament. She will need more surgery shortly, and skiing the Olympic downhill — in which she won gold four years ago — will be impossible.
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The development immediately sucks some star power from the U.S. Olympic team — and from NBC, which will carry the Games from Russia. As a four-time World Cup overall champion and two-time Olympic medalist, Vonn had generated crossover appeal. She is familiar to sports fans who are not necessarily familiar with skiers, appearing on the “Tonight” show and in a variety of ad campaigns. Dating golf star Tiger Woods has also increased her visibility.

The American ski team must now turn to others if they hope to back up their stellar performance from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Veteran Julia Mancuso, who has won three Olympic medals, is struggling thus far this season but has a reputation for bringing out her best performances in the premier events. Mikaela Shiffrin, an 18-year-old from Eagle-Vail, Colo., just won the sixth World Cup slalom race of her young career, and she will go into the Games as a favorite for a medal in that discipline.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2014/01/07/lindsey-vonn-will-not-compete-in-sochi-olympics/

Posted: Tue January 7, 2014 8:32AM; Updated: Tue January 7, 2014 9:13AM

Tim Layden>INSIDE OLYMPIC SPORTS

It would have been a remarkable and inspiring story if Lindsay Vonn had won her second consecutive gold medal in the Olympic downhill barely a year after a crash in which she suffered catastrophic damage to her right knee. She required surgery last March to reconstruct the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments, and just the passage of time to heal a tibial plateau fracture in that same leg. It would have been the kind of performance that fits all sorts of Olympic storytelling paradigms: Obstacle overcome, star power proven, genuine greatness validated. It would have been the moment of the Games, or of any Games.

And it would have been even more remarkable and more inspiring if she had won that second gold medal less than three months after re-tearing the ACL (which had been reconstructed using a 10-inch piece of Vonn's right hamstring) during a speed training session on Nov. 19 at Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado. And it would have buried the needle on improbability and drama if Vonn had somehow taken home a gold just 53 days after that right knee, encased in a heavy brace, buckled beneath Vonn as she carved through an unthreatening turn in a World Cup downhill race in Val D'Isere, France, on Dec. 21. That would have been the story that parents tell their children and children retell theirs, the story of the day that the great Lindsey Vonn won the Olympics on one good leg (with Tiger Woods watching at the bottom).

But this will not happen. Vonn announced early Tuesday morning that she will be unable to participate in the Games, which begin in Sochi, Russia on Feb. 7. Vonn's withdrawal, which came in the form of a press release from her Los Angeles-based publicist, has seemed increasingly inevitable in recent days, a certainty held at bay only by Vonn's long record of winning while in physical distress. But she had not raced since the Val d'Isere incident, and last week U.S. team coach Alex Hoedlmoser told the Associated Press that Vonn had not been on skis since that race and was considering not competing at all before Sochi. Vonn said that she will soon repeat the ACL surgery and plans to return to competition in 2015.

Mikaela Shiffrin, who turned 18 on Wednesday {March 13, 2013}, became the youngest World Cup slalom season champion since 1974 on Saturday {March 16, 2013}. (Shinichiro Tanaka, The Associated Press)

Mikaela Shiffrin takes first place during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Women's Slalom on Saturday {March 16, 2013} in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. (Getty Images)