American skier Lindsey Vonn says she has “no regrets” after a crash within the ladies’s downhill competitors on the Winter Olympics resulted in a “complicated tibia fracture” which would require a number of surgical procedures.
The 41-year-old’s arm received caught in a gate simply 13 seconds into her run on Sunday at Olimpia delle Tofane in Cortina, throwing her off stability.
She was handled on the slope for a prolonged interval earlier than being airlifted off the piste to Ca Foncello hospital in Treviso, the place she had surgical procedure on a fractured left leg.
The 2010 Olympic downhill champion was already racing with ruptured ligaments in her left knee however was decided to compete in her fifth and remaining Video games.
“Yesterday my Olympic dream didn’t end the way in which I dreamt it might,” she mentioned in a publish on Instagram on Monday.
“It wasn’t a narrative e-book ending or a fairytale, it was simply life. I dared to dream and had labored so arduous to realize it.
“Whereas yesterday didn’t finish the way in which I had hoped, and regardless of the extraordinary bodily ache it prompted, I’ve no regrets.
“Standing within the beginning gate yesterday was an unbelievable feeling that I’ll always remember. Figuring out I stood there having an opportunity to win was a victory in and of itself.”
Vonn crashed in Switzerland within the remaining race earlier than the Olympics 9 days earlier than competing within the downhill occasion in Italy.
In a media convention on Wednesday, she confirmed she had torn her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) however expressed willpower to compete.
The 2-time world champion says the torn ACL and her earlier accidents, together with a partial proper knee substitute, “had nothing to do with my crash in anyway”.
Vonn’s resolution to race has led to widespread reward for her bravery but additionally criticism in regards to the risks and potential threat of everlasting harm.
“It all the time was and all the time will probably be an extremely harmful sport. And just like ski racing, we take dangers in life,” she mentioned.
“We dream. We love. We leap. And typically we fall. Typically our hearts are damaged. Typically we do not obtain the goals we all know we might have. However that can also be the fantastic thing about life; we are able to attempt.
“I hope if you happen to take away something from my journey it is that you just all have the braveness to dare tremendously. Life is just too quick to not take probabilities on your self. As a result of the one failure in life just isn’t attempting.
“I attempted. I dreamt. I jumped.”
