Lindsey Vonn Was Never Going to Play It Safe

"Lindsey Vonn always knew that it would take just one slight catch of an edge to turn her from the reigning empress of alpine skiing into a broken figure in the snow. That's the nature of the Olympic downhill. It was no use for the scolds and skeptics to warn an athlete like Vonn, who, at 41, had one rebuilt knee and a torn ACL on the other, that she might hurt herself."

"She crashed fewer than 14 seconds into her final downhill Olympics run at Cortina d'Ampezzo, and the cosmic joke was that her left knee, on which she was racing despite a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, wasn't to blame. Seeking to attack on a sidehill line, Vonn caught the fourth gate with her ski pole. As she sailed into an angled turn, the caught pole yanked her back by the arm, and her skis canted dead sideways, giving her no chance to recover."

"Down at the finish line, her American teammate Breezy Johnson, the eventual gold medalist, immediately put a hand over her eyes. The snow-muffled silence of shock made Vonn's cries of pain ("Oh my God!") audible. Her blue racing skins stood out vividly as she lay unmoving on the slope. The emergency sled was red. The rescue helicopter was yellow, dangling her in the air over the jagged white Dolomites."

Lindsey Vonn entered her final Olympic downhill at 41 with one rebuilt knee and a torn ACL in the other. She crashed fewer than 14 seconds into the Cortina d'Ampezzo run after her ski pole caught the fourth gate, yanking her arm and causing her skis to cant sideways. The fall produced geysers of snow and a cartwheel down the slope. Teammate Breezy Johnson covered her eyes at the finish as Vonn lay unmoving and cried out in pain. Rescue teams sledded and airlifted her from the jagged Dolomites. The U.S. ski team later reported she was injured but in stable condition.

Read at The Atlantic