U.S. alpine skier Lindsey Vonn has appeared on scores of magazines, but will she even appear in the Winter Olympics?
The Vancouver Games open Friday, and the featured U.S. performer told NBC’s Today Show on Wednesday that she is injured, according to media reports. Vonn has a deep muscle bruise in her shin that may alter her plans for the Olympics. She told the NBC morning show that she injured her shin a week ago during a slalom training run in Austria and has not been on skis since.
“When I tried my boot on, I was just standing in the hotel room barely flexing forward, and it was excruciatingly painful, and I’ve got to try to ski downhill at 75, 80 miles an hour with a lot of forces pushed up against my shin,” Vonn said on the Today Show. “I don’t honestly know if I’ll be able to do it.”
Vonn is scheduled to compete in five events starting with the first women's alpine race on Feb. 14. She is doubtful to make her 2010 Olympic debut at that event.
She is going to limit her training to avoid aggravating the muscle bruise, but will do her best to push through and compete next week. Her doctors warned her that the injury could take several weeks to heal.
"I won the last World Cup race," she said. "I felt perfectly healthy. I was happy. I was coming in with confidence. And now I have another injury. I've fought through injuries before. I'm no stranger to that. But it's going to be really hard. I just have to try to stay positive and do the best I can because that's all I can do."
Vonn competed in the 2006 Olympics where a crash left her with a bruised back. She suited up to compete less than 48 hours later. The skier finished eighth in the downhill and didn’t receive any medals.
Since then, the 25-year-old Vonn has worked toward an epic 2010 comeback and become the first female to hold back-to-back overall World Cup titles. Hopefully, her persistence this time around will yield better results than in Torino, but she is not offering any sort of false optimism.
"I'm a lot less sure about this injury than I have been in the past," Vonn admitted.
