Despite being delayed by more than an hour due to fog, Lindsey Vonn successfully trained in Cortina on Friday, clearing a major hurdle ahead of Sunday’s Olympic women’s downhill race, exactly a week after she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee and was airlifted from a mountain in Switzerland.
Completing the training run is considered not only a crucial test for the knee but also a necessity for Vonn, 41, in his quest for a fourth Olympic medal 16 years after winning gold in Vancouver. Officials canceled one of Vaughn’s three chances to complete practice Thursday because of heavy snow and dangerous conditions.
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Vonn needed just one to clear the Olimpia del Tofane slopes relatively cleanly in 1 minute, 40.33 seconds. It’s unclear whether Vaughn plans to participate in Saturday’s practice.
While it’s somewhat unprecedented for an athlete to try to compete at the Olympic level with an injury that typically requires reconstructive surgery and at least nine months of recovery, Vonn said at a press conference earlier this week that she has minimal pain and swelling in her knee and feels stable. Those claims were backed up by a training video she posted on Instagram on Thursday, which showed Vonn performing an intense workout that included weighted squats and box jumps.
Ahead of Friday’s run, she posted another message on social media, which featured a smiling selfie with mountains in the background and the caption: “Nothing could make me happier!”
The successful training should allay some concerns that Vonn is too ambitious heading into the Winter Olympics. While orthopedic experts who spoke to Yahoo Sports stressed that the average person can’t and shouldn’t try to do what Vaughn is doing, Dr. Yair David Kissin of Hackensack University Medical Center said it’s a “good example of how each case needs to be individualized.”
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He added: “As a sports medicine ACL doctor, a knee doctor, it brings tears to my eyes that she was able to reach this level of athleticism and performance after everything she’s been through. No one else sees the work that she does. You have to respect and appreciate that.”
Just minutes before Vonn’s scheduled run, heavy fog rolled in about midway through the course, all but eliminating visibility on key sections of the course. Vonn seemed to be in good spirits throughout the delay, at one point practicing dance with her U.S. teammates.
