Vail’s Vonn hurts knee: No surgery, but she’ll miss Lake Louise
Associated Press file photo
COPPER MOUNTAIN — Lindsey Vonn’s quest to break Ingemar Stenmark’s World Cup record of 86 career wins may have just hit a major bump.
The Vail racer announced via Twitter on Tuesday, Nov. 20, that she injured her knee during super-G training on Monday, Nov. 19, at Copper Mountain, and will not compete in next week’s first speed events of the season in Lake Louise, Alberta.
“… I crashed training super-G and hurt my knee,” Vonn tweeted. “The good news; I do NOT need surgery. The bad news; I won’t be able to race in Lake Louise. LL has always been my favorite stop on the WC and I am devastated to not be coming this year. I am down but I am NOT out! #NeverGiveUp.”
Of Vonn’s 82 World Cup victories, 18 have come at Lake Louise, which has been dubbed Lake Lindsey. If one were calculating Vonn’s path to five wins before the 2018-19 season, the annual Canadian stop would be on the list for a hypothetical victory or two.
Vonn has swept the Lake Louise races — two downhills and a super-G — three times in her career (2011, 2012 and 2015).
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The most prolific racer in American history announced earlier this autumn that the 2018-19 season would be her last.
The right knee
Vonn did not specify which knee she hurt, but the assumption is that it is her right one. That was the knee she originally injured at the 2013 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships super-G in Schladming, Austria. In that horrific crash, she tore her ACL and MCL and sustained a tibial-plateau fracture.
She tried hurrying back from that injury at the beginning of the 2013-14 season with an eye on competing in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, to no avail.
Since that injury, Vonn has won 23 times, a career for most, on the World Cup.
She’s also won bronze medals at Worlds in super-G in 2015 at Beaver Creek and in downhill at St. Moritz, Switzerland, and was third in the 2018 Olympic downhill in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The calendar
With Lake Louise a no-go, Vonn will be missing three of the 18 scheduled speed events of the season. Her career-win totals of 43 downhills and 28 in super-G top the charts in alpine history.
Looking ahead to the schedule, the first super-G after Lake Louise is in St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Dec. 8. Val d’Isere, France, hosts the first full speed weekend — both a downhill and a super-G — on Dec. 15-16.
If Vonn needs more time, St. Anton, Switzerland, on Jan. 12-13 might be a target date.
