CORTINA D'AMPEZZO (Italy) (AFP) – Lindsey Vonn said on Monday she had suffered a "complex tibia fracture" to her left leg in a heavy crash that brutally ended her hopes of winning the fourth Olympic medal of her career in a remarkable comeback.
AFP looks at the latest developments after the heavy crash at Cortina d'Ampezzo on Sunday and whether it could spell the end of the 41-year-old American ski star's career:
Leg break will need 'multiple surgeries'
In her first statement since the crash on Sunday, Vonn said she had suffered a complicated fracture of her tibia that would need "multiple surgeries to fix properly".
But she insisted: "While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets."
Vonn said the ruptured anterior cruciate ligament she had sustained in a crash in a World Cup race before the Milan-Cortina Games "had nothing to do with my crash (at the Olympics) whatsoever".
"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," she added on her social media, from the hospital in the Italian city of Treviso where she is being treated.
Just seconds after pushing off from the start gate in Sunday's final, Vonn hit a gate on the piste and lost balance, her skis remaining attached to her ski boots as she uncomfortably slid to a halt.
"I sustained a complex tibia fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to fix properly," she said.
A RACE TOO FAR?
Vonn's attempt to compete at the Olympics looked risky given the extent of her ACL injury, even wearing a brace designed to stabilise her injured knee.
She was trying to complete a remarkable comeback from retirement with an Olympic medal, 16 years after she won her only Olympic gold in the downhill in Vancouver.
Rivals and teammates all spoke of the inherent risks in alpine skiing, and in particular the downhill, in which athletes regularly reach speeds of over 120 kilometres per hour (74 miles per hour).
Breezy Johnson, Vonn's American teammate who went on to win the Olympic downhill gold, described the impulse to compete even in precarious physical condition as a form of "madness" common to top skiers.
"It can hurt you so badly but you keep coming back," she said.
Johan Eliasch, the head of the International Ski Federation, said on Monday of Vonn's decision to compete in the fateful downhill: "This has to be decided by the individual athlete.
"What is also important for people to understand is that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky, one in a thousand.
"This is something which is part of ski racing and it's a dangerous sport," Eliasch added.
NOW WHAT?
Vonn gave no indication in the statement of her future plans beyond saying: "Similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken."
Speaking before her update, Luc Alphand, a three-time winner of the men's downhill World Cup title, told AFP that the fact that Vonn's skis did not detach from her boots when she crashed increased the chances of further damage to legs that have already seen enough hurt to last a lifetime.
The Frenchman told AFP that her crash came about due to a technical error that could have been made worse by a lack of speed.
"They were going at 80-90kph, which is not very fast," said Alphand.
"Because there isn't enough speed, the skis don't release completely... The skis are really tightly bound and their leverage is enormous. They are 2.15 metres (7 feet) long and heavy, and that causes damage."
The current World Cup season finishes in less than two month's time, and after that Vonn will have to decide whether, into her fifth decade, she must bring down the curtain on a career that has made her one of the most recognisable faces in world sport.