Vonn credits brace with saving knee, hopes to race next week
Alessandro Trovati/APLindsey Vonn still hopes to compete at the Sochi Winter Olympics despite recent crash.
Ski racer Lindsey Vonn says the knee she injured in a Colorado training crash last week would have been damaged much more severely if she hadn't been wearing a brace on it already.
Vonn, who aims to compete in the Olympics in February, described the accident to NBC's Matt Lauer this morning, saying that 'if things go well' she would be able to resume racing next week.
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'I'm very hopeful, but like I said, I don't know until I get on snow,' Vonn said. 'I just need to feel stable.'
In Vonn's pre-dawn Today show appearance (she stood outside on the edge of a Colorado ski slope), she described for the first time the Nov. 19 fall that caused the injury.
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'It was kind of a tricky course,' Vonn said, describing how repeated training runs by previous racers had left ruts in the snow on a difficult turn. 'My ski just kind of tracked out.'
Vonn said she ended up in the safety nets and speculated that the tumble would have damaged her right knee more if not for the brace she was wearing as a protective measure.
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'If I didn't have my brace on there would be nothing left in my knee,' said Vonn in the Today Show appearance, standing
According to the U.S. Ski Team medical staff, Vonn's Nov. 19 crash at Copper Mountain caused a partial tear of her right ACL. That is one of the same ligaments that was rebuilt by surgeons following Vonn's serious crash in Austria last February. She spent the summer rehabbing the joint and got back on snow in Chile at the end of August.
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Vonn skipped the season's first two races on the FIS World Cup circuit, where she is in pursuit of Annemarie Moser-Proell's three-decade-old record of 62 career race victories, the most among women. Vonn has 59.
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