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US skier Lindsey Vonn will need several surgeries

Lindsey Vonn

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn sustained a “complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly” after her devastating crash in the Olympic downhill, the skier said in a social media post late Monday.

Vonn posted on Instagram about her left leg injuries following her fall in Sunday’s race.

“While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets,” Vonn said.

Nine days before Sunday’s crash, the 41-year-old Vonn ruptured the ACL in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.

Onlookers on social media wondered if Vonn’s ruptured ACL could have played a factor in her crash near the top of the Olympia delle Tofana course, where she has a World Cup record 12 wins. That maybe, on a healthy left knee, she would not have clipped a gate and been able to stave off a crash.

“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.

“I was simply 5 inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash. My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”

Vonn’s father said Monday that the American superstar will no longer race if he has any influence over her decision.

“She’s 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more ski races for Lindsey Vonn, as long as I have anything to say about it.”

When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.

“I firmly believe that this has to be decided by the individual athlete,” FIS president Johan Eliasch said Monday in Bormio. “And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries on her body better than anybody else.”

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