Lindsey Vonn says her torn ACL ‘had nothing to do with my crash.’ Here’s what she says went wrong

Following the devastating crash that led to her evacuation from the course by helicopter, ski superstar Lindsey Vonn said she doesn’t regret competing – despite having torn her ACL less than two weeks earlier.

In a statement posted on social media, she insisted her ACL and past injuries “had nothing to do with my crash 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 explained.

Nine days before Sunday’s crash, the 41-year-old Vonn ruptured the ACL in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.

Read Lindsey Vonn’s complete message following her devastating crash here.

Onlookers on social media wondered if Vonn’s ruptured ACL could have played a factor in her crash near the top of the Olympia delle Tofana course, where she has a World Cup record 12 wins. That maybe, on a healthy left knee, she would not have clipped a gate and been able to stave off a crash.

AP photojournalist Jacquelyn Martin explains her position on the course, her split-second reaction, and how she captured the rare sequence of Lindsey Vonn’s crash during the Olympic downhill in Cortina.

“Yesterday my Olympic dream did not finish the way I dreamt it would,” Vonn said. “It wasn’t a story book ending or a fairy tail, it was just life. I dared to dream and had worked so hard to achieve it. Because in Downhill ski racing the difference between a strategic line and a catastrophic injury can be as small as 5 inches.”

When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.

The Italian hospital in Treviso where Vonn was being treated said late Sunday she had undergone surgery to repair a broken left leg. The U.S. Ski Team has said only that Vonn “sustained an injury, but is in stable condition and in good hands with a team of American and Italian physicians.”

Vonn, in her message on social media, said, “Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have.”

I tried. I dreamt. I jumped,” she said. “I hope if you take away anything from my journey it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying. I believe in you, just as you believed in me.”