When Lindsey Vonn announced that she would compete at the Winter Olympics with a torn ACL, disbelief followed. Skiing downhill at close to 80 mph is dangerous with a healthy body. But doing it without one of the knee’s main stabilizers? It sounds reckless, especially for Vonn, who has a history of knee injuries. But as shocking as it sounds to the outside world, Vonn’s teammates see it differently.

That gap between public disbelief and insider understanding came through Breezy Johnson, Vonn’s downhill teammate, who spoke openly about something alpine skiing rarely admits. “The dirty secret is that it happens in skiing, and some people talk about it and some don’t,” Johnson said.

Johnson knows the danger, having experienced it, although her road was not the same. Early in 2022, a few weeks before the Beijing Olympics, she crashed in Cortina and severely injured her knee in training. Later scans revealed that major cartilage damage. She wondered whether she could push through, but decided that the danger was too high.

“It’s hard. It’s not easy. It’s not the safest thing that you can conceive of doing,” Johnson said. “But it can be done, and it is done.”

The boundary between risk and potential lies in the middle.  Johnson was 26 at the time and believed another Olympic chance would come. It did. Vonn, now 41, is working against a different clock. Time is not on her side, and patience is a luxury she does not have.

History shows Lindsey Vonn is not alone in trying. Carlo Janka tore his ACL in 2017 and still competed at the Olympics just over two months later. Bode Miller was famously guarded when asked about the condition of his knees.

Even Vonn’s youth coach from Buck Hill, Tony Olin, once raced for years without an ACL. “I competed for three years with no ACL. Can be done,” Olin wrote in a text message.

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Despite the risks, Lindsey Vonn has not lost the confidence of her camp. Her coach, Chris Knight believes the dream is still alive. “I’m pretty confident that she can still pull off this dream,” Knight said. “I’ve got no doubts in my mind that this is going to be OK.”

However, the injury in question is serious. Vonn has completely ruptured an ACL in her left knee. Adding to it is bone bruising and meniscus tears, which is also contributes to the damage.

Still, to achieve her Olympic dream, Vonn must still pass a complete medical examination and race in one official downhill training.  Only then can she show that her knee will be able to endure the speed, strength, and unpredictability of a real course. That condition makes her comeback a bet in public, not a personal choice. And doctors watching closely.

Confidence meets caution as experts weigh in on Lindsey Vonn’s racing without an ACL

Undoubtedly, Lindsey Vonn has kept her last Olympic dream alive by deciding to make it to the Olympics with a torn Acl. However, it has also caused a real panic in the mind of medical experts who observe that downhill skiing at such a high pace with such trauma is quite dangerous.

Dr. Sean Baran, a sports medicine expert and practicing in Colorado, argues that a torn ACL does not necessarily restrict movement, but it removes one of the primary stabilizers in the knee. “It’s a rotational stabilizer,” he said. “For things that involve fast change of direction, cutting, pivoting, twisting, jumping, we classically think that the ACL is a necessary thing.”

Lindsey Vonn is fully aware of that reality which is why she has already tested her injured knee in training with the support of a brace.

But Baran cautioned that a brace will not go far. “The trouble is the brace can’t replace what the ligament itself does,” he explained. “It doesn’t give you that feedback that an intact ligament gives to your brain and from a rotational perspective an ACL brace is not a great rotational stabilizer.”

Sure, Vonn has not dismissed those risks. For now, she has decided to keep the final decision to herself until she sees how her body reacts to high speed. “If it’s stable and I feel confident, I’ll continue to race,” she said.

For Lindsey Vonn, the motivation runs deeper than numbers or history. “I think this would be the best comeback I’ve done so far,” she said. But what makes Vonn’s situation even more daunting is the course at Cortina.

The Tofana Schuss is steep and brutally fast, followed by the blind entry into the Duca d’Aosta jump, where skiers are launched into the air before landing hard. It is the same section of the mountain where Johnson’s Olympic hopes ended in 2022.

Whether it becomes a moment of triumph or a warning tale for Vonn will depend on what happens when she finally points her skis downhill again.