Lindsey Vonn shared a heartbreaking update with her fans Wednesday about the status of her leg injury. She said she will “not be able to compete” Thursday.
“After a lot of physical therapy and time to clearly think things through, we have come to some conclusions about my knee,” the 34-year-old Olympic gold medalist captioned her post on Instagram. “First, we discovered the reason I had so much pain and muscle shut down in Cortina was due to an impact injury to my peroneal nerve.” (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything)
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“This most likely came from the final jump on the first training run in Cortina, but it’s hard to know for sure,” she added. “After that training run, the pain got progressively worse each day and by Sunday my lower leg was in a lot of pain and my muscles had completely shut down.” (RELATED: Check Out The Hottest 2018 U.S. Female Winter Olympians [SLIDESHOW])
Vonn then reassured her fans the first step was figuring out the problem, which she has done. Now, the second step is “fixing it.”
“So far we haven’t found a solution and as a result I will not be able to compete in tomorrow’s downhill training run,” the World Cup champion explained. “However, since this is a new ‘injury’ per say, I remain hopeful that we can fix it. I’m taking things day by day and we will see what happens.”
“I know that I might not get the ending to my career that I had hoped for, but if there is a chance, I will take it,” she added. “Thanks for all of the support you have shown me, it helps keep me going.”
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The comment comes just weeks after the professional downhill skier announced that her previous injury had healed and she was ready to get back on the hill. She is trying to compete to capture that record of World Cup wins before she walks away from the sport. She has 82 such wins and is only 5 away from beating Ingemark Stenmark’s all-time World Cup record of 86 wins.
