Veteran skier Lindsey Vonn is an “iconic superhuman athlete” and is “risking everything” by racing with an anterior cruciate ligament injury on Sunday, says former Olympic skier Chemmy Alcott.<\/p>\n
American Vonn has completed two impressive Winter Olympics training runs for the downhill event at Olimpia delle Tofane in Cortina, only one week after rupturing her ACL in a crash at a World Cup race in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Vonn, 41, clocked the third-fastest time of the day in another session disrupted by the weather, prompting speculation about what is considered to be a serious injury.<\/p>\n
“After two training runs, Lindsey Vonn is pulling the pressure off her left leg but she is still fast,” Alcott told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“She is an iconic superhuman athlete and is risking everything for this. She is putting her life on the line for this moment on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“With two training runs going well, something will be ticking saying ‘I can do this’.”<\/p>\n
The second practice run came after she responded to a social media post from sports medicine doctor Brian Sutterer in which he claimed the 2010 Olympic downhill champion may have already been functioning on a torn ACL before the crash, which saw her airlifted to hospital.<\/p>\n
“What was the state of her ACL before the crash last week?” Sutterer wrote.<\/p>\n
“What she is doing now would not be nearly as surprising in an elite athlete whose knee was already functioning like the ACL was torn at baseline.”<\/p>\n
Vonn replied: “Lol thanks doc. My ACL was fully functioning until last Friday. Just because it seems impossible to you doesn’t mean it’s not possible. And yes, my ACL is 100% ruptured. Not 80% or 50%. It’s 100% gone.”<\/p>\n
Sutterer suggested that “someone who had a prior tear\/surgery may not be as swollen and painful with a repeat injury” and “the body has time to adapt and retrain muscles to support the knee” if the injury is “chronic”.<\/p>\n
Source: RhinoEasy News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Veteran skier Lindsey Vonn is an “iconic superhuman athlete” and is “risking everything” by racing with an anterior cruciate ligament<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}