She said that while the competition did not end how she imagined, she has no regrets about her journey.
WASHINGTON — American skier Lindsey Vonn shared an update on her health Monday following a frightening crash that left her with a broken left leg.
Vonn shared the statement on social media, revealing that she had a complex tibia fracture and will “require multiple surgeries to fix properly.”
“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would. It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life,” she said in a statement shared on Instagram. “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,” she continued. “Unfortunately, I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly.”
She added that while the competition did not end how she imagined, she has no regrets about her journey.
“While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. I also knew that racing was a risk. It always was and always will be an incredibly dangerous sport,” she added. “And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is the also the beauty of life; we can try.
“I tried. I dreamt. I jumped,” she said. “I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying. I believe in you, just as you believed in me.”
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.
Vonn, who holds the record of 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, returned to the circuit last season after nearly six years of retirement and after a partial titanium replacement surgery in her right knee. She won two downhills and finished on the podium in seven of the eight World Cup races that she finished this season — and came fourth in the other one.
Vonn’s father said Monday that the American superstar will no longer race if he has any influence over her decision and that she will not return to the Winter Olympics after breaking her leg in the downhill over the weekend.
“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.”
Kildow declined to comment on details of Vonn’s injuries, but he did address how she was doing emotionally.
“She’s a very strong individual,” Kildow said. “She knows physical pain and she understands the circumstances that she finds herself in. And she’s able to handle it. Better than I expected. She’s a very, very strong person. And so I think she’s handling it real well.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.