Alpine Skiing

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Orthopedic surgeon Bill Sterett, head physician with the U.S. women's alpine ski team, said late Wednesday that a "muscular contusion" to Lindsey Vonn's lower leg won't stop her from downhill training Thursday or competing in all five events at the Winter Olympics.

The U.S. ski team will meet Thursday morning to assess the status of the overall World Cup champion's right leg injury, which happened more than a week ago during training when she rolled her shin over the top of her boot. But doctors don't see any reason for it to keep her out of the 2010 Games.

"We have no plans on changing her training schedule or her racing schedule," Sterett told reporters in Whistler, adding that his confidence that she will compete is "absolutely, 100 per cent yes."

Vonn, who has dominated the World Cup circuit this year and considered a threat to win five gold medals at Whistler, suffered a right shin bruise in training a week ago in Austria.

She hasn't skied since, and said at a press conference this morning that she was unsure how the injury would respond to training and racing. The bruise is at exactly the point where her boot contacts her leg, and Vonn said that even standing in her hotel room with ski boots on, the pain was "excruciating." (Vonn said that she hadn't had the leg x-rayed, because she didn't want to see what it might reveal.)

"I'm hoping that tomorrow when I get on skis (for the first downhill training run), things will be okay, but I have no idea," she said, sounding shaken.
Asked whether that might mean she would be unable to compete in these Games at all, Vonn said: "Yeah, that's a possibility."

There has been "significant" swelling and bleeding in the muscle, but there are no concerns that there is an injury or fracture to her bone, he added. Sterett assessed her injury for the first time on Tuesday. Up until now, she has been treated by a team of physicians in Europe including using topfen, a cheese curd, sometimes used as an anti-inflammatory.

"It's just been slow to get better," Sterett said.

Sterett, who treated Vonn as a youngster in Vail, Colo., for a tibia fracture to her right leg, and saw her after her horrifying crash during training at the Turin Games in 2006, said he had no doubt about her mental strength to compete in top form.

"She's one of the toughest and strongest willed competitors you'll meet," he said.

Her male teammates were also optimistic.

"She'll compete," Steven Nyman, who will be racing in his second Olympics at the 2010 Games, told reporters at a press conference in Whistler after their first downhill training run.

Veteran U.S. team member Bode Miller, who is notoriously prickly with the press, dismissed the concerns as incomplete details coming through the media.

"That's not the best source of information," he said, smiling.

Vonn has fought through injuries many times in her career. At the Turin Olympics in 2006, she came back from a terrible crash that caused severe bruising to her back and managed to start her next race - though she didn't reach the podium. And at the World Championships in Val d'Isere year, she suffered a freak accident, slicing tendons in her thumb on a broken champagne bottle, but came back immediately following surgery, wearing a special protective glove.

Vonn was asked Wednesday whether this injury was worse than the one she suffered in Turin.

"I would say it's similar," she said. "But I think I feel with a back injury, it's easier to push through the pain. With a shin injury, there's no way around the pain."