Before Return to Snow, Lindsey Vonn Warns Her Competitors

For the first time in 10 months, Lindsey Vonn on Wednesday plans to ski again when she makes a few modest turns on an Austrian training slope. It will be a cautious first step as Vonn attempts to return from two devastating knee injuries, but it is meaningful progress since Vonn senses that many in the ski community are discounting her comeback.

'A lot of people don't think I will be back,' said Vonn, who turns 30 this month and has not won a race in 21 months. 'That's fine. The other girls are probably feeling pretty comfortable without me out there. When I do come back I think they'll see that they can't be comfortable anymore.

'It's a new generation coming up, but they'll definitely realize that the veteran is not gone quite yet.'

Vonn is also adamant that she plans to race in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

'I need to have another chance to defend my Olympic gold medal in the downhill,' Vonn said. 'I knew that in January as soon as I mentally accepted that I couldn't race in the Sochi Olympics. I want another chance to compete.'

It will be Vonn's fourth Olympics. Her first was in 2002.

'I'll only be 33 years old,' said Vonn, a four-time World Cup overall champion. 'People wonder if my body will hold up? I'm very confident it will.'

This winter, Vonn does not plan to resume racing until December at the earliest when she is hoping to enter the three-race competition at Lake Louise in Canada, where she has won 14 times.

'I feel like that's enough time to get ready,' she said. 'But you never know. If I'm not ready I can back off. I don't have to push myself into anything. I have time.'

Unlike last winter when Vonn was on an accelerated schedule to rehabilitate the torn anterior cruciate ligament she sustained in her right knee on Feb. 5, 2013, this year Vonn's goals are far more restrained.

'Last year, it felt like it was do-or-die,' she said. 'I was thinking of possibly retiring after the 2015 world championships, so Sochi was a last Olympic chance and I felt like I had to get there.'

But during high-speed training in November last year - she had been ahead of a normal rehabilitation schedule - she crashed and ruptured her surgically rebuilt anterior cruciate ligament. She tried to race without the ligament, but when it was clear her knee was not stable, she gave in to the inevitable and had surgery again in January of this year.

'I don't regret anything I did last year; I felt awesome and I was healed,' Vonn said. 'I wouldn't change anything. It was just a very unfortunate turn of events.'

The second A.C.L. injury was also much more severe than the first one with significant damage to menisci on either side of the joint. She visited the renowned surgeon Dr. James Andrews, who cautioned that she had to be exceedingly careful as she tried to get the knee back to full strength.

'Dr. Andrews said there was a 50-50 chance the sutures in the menisci wouldn't hold,' Vonn said. 'Everything has healed now, but for the first six months I had to be very cautious.'

Last year, four days after resuming her ski training, Vonn was banging through race gates.

'I won't be skiing gates for a while this time and I'm not going to be excited about that,' she said with a laugh. 'That's not my nature to wait, but it's the best thing for my knee.'

Vonn said she would be guided by Pascal Hasler, an assistant coach for the United States ski team who formerly worked with Liechtenstein star Tina Weirather, who has had to recover from multiple knee surgeries.

'Pascal has a lot of experience with thought-out and more regulated return-to-snow programs,' Vonn said.

Lokasi:

Share :