CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Take it from an actual Olympic Alpine skier: all these armchair experts claiming Lindsey Vonn’s injury caused her crash have no idea what they’re talking about.
When you hook a gate at high speed, as Vonn did in the downhill race Sunday, Feb. 8, there is little chance of making a recovery, said Keely Cashman, one of the American speed skiers.
‘That twists your body around. That has nothing to do with her ACL, nothing to do with her knee,’ Cashman said Monday, Feb. 9. ‘A lot of people are ridiculing that, and a lot of people don’t know what’s going on.
‘I’m not sure why people have so many opinions about it.’
Because people are ignorant. And think they understand skiing and skiers’ injuries and Olympic selection procedures when they … do not.
Vonn was skiing with a torn ACL, bone bruising and meniscus damage in her left knee after a Jan. 30 crash in the final downhill before the Milano Cortina Olympics. It’s not unheard of for someone to ski with a torn ACL — Vonn herself did it in the fall of 2013 and new Olympic champion Breezy Johnson tried to in 2022 — and Vonn said her knee felt stable and strong. She also wore a brace.
She was able to lift weights and do squats in the days after the initial crash, and she was solid in the two training runs ahead of the race. She posted the 11th-best time in the first training run, and was third-fastest in the second.
But Vonn was going for broke in the race, as one does when you’re trying to win, and taking a very tight line. She hooked the fourth gate, which spun her around and flung her into the hard snow surface. She then tumbled end over end several times before coming to rest.
‘Stick your hand out the car window when you’re driving down the freeway and then pretend you’re not connected to the car. It’s going to twist you around,’ Cashman said. ‘People just don’t understand really what goes on.’
Which is troubling to the people who actually do.
‘A lot of people have a lot of opinions about what happened yesterday and most of them are incorrect,’ Cashman said. ‘I hope that people can keep their opinions to themselves and just support her and understand that it’s her life and she’ll do whatever she wants and it doesn’t affect you.’