Ski champion Lindsey Vonn was airlifted away from the World Championships in Austria Tuesday after crashing during a race and now her season is over after suffering a serious knee injury.
According to ESPN.com, U.S. ski team medical director Kyle Wilkens said that Vonn tore the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in her knee and also suffered a lateral tibia plateau fracture, which involves the upper surface of the shin bone.
Vonn was taken to the hospital by helicopter after crashing during the a super-G run at the world championships, marking the sixth straight time Vonn has been hurt during a major competition. Vonn will need surgery and her competitive season is finished, although she will be ready for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, which are one year away.
The four-time overall World Cup champion crashed after losing balance on her right side during her run. After her ski immediately came off, Vonn slid off the course and crashed a gate. She was treated for over 10 minutes on the course and then was airlifted to the hospital. At the time, Vonn was trailing race leader and rival Tina Maze of Slovenia by 0.12 seconds.
This is the second time in as many months that Vonn has been dealing with health issues, as she just recently returned to competing after an almost monthlong break from racing to fully recover from an intestinal illness that put her in a hospital for two days in November.
The race was also postponed by fog for three hours, bringing up the question of whether the conditions were not safe for racing. The event was postponed for 3 1/2 hours because of fog and restarted after a 15-minute delay.
"It's not a very difficult course, but in some parts you couldn't see anything," Fabienne Suter of Switzerland said.
This is not the first medical issue for Vonn at major events, including when she had to pull out of the last worlds in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 2010 due to a concussion. She suffered a bruised shin at the Olympics in Vancouver, but still was able to ski and took the bronze medal in the event.
According to ESPN.com, "Vonn also sliced her thumb on a champagne bottle after sweeping gold in the downhill and super-G at the 2009 worlds in Val d'Isere, France and at the 2007 worlds in Are, Sweden, Vonn injured her knee in training and missed her final two events. And at the 2006 Torino Olympics, she had a horrific crash during downhill training yet went directly from her hospital room to the mountain to compete in four of her five events."
Vonn is the most decorated American skier in history and is a four-time World Cup overall champion, winning in a record 16 discipline titles. She also has 59 World Cup wins, second-most all-time and three shy of the record.
In a blog post for the Denver Post on Sunday, Vonn expressed some issues about the conditions of the hill. "None of our staff has been on the hill," she wrote. "We don't know what shape the hill is in. We don't know anything about it."
According to Ski Racing magazine, who was reporting on site, Vonn appeared to be hurt and that the finish stadium was silent. It was a scary crash. Teammate Mikaela Shiffrin tweeted, "She has to be OK ... Please be OK." Former World Cup downhiller Brian Stemmle tweeted, "It doesn't look good at all."
Vonn came into the race on a hot streak after winning two races in one week during the World Cup Giant Slalom races. She also has reportedly been dating Tiger Woods and missed time last year due to an illness.
Vonn's love life has always been tabloid fodder, with links to other athletes including Tim Tebow. She split from her husband Thomas Vonn in 2011 and now is dominating the headlines with her romance with Woods.
