Feb 23 (Reuters) – U.S. ski great Lindsey Vonn revealed on Monday that she nearly had her left leg amputated following a crash during the women’s downhill at the Milano Cortina Olympics but is now out of hospital and hoping to progress from a wheelchair to crutches in a few weeks.
The 41-year-old Vonn said in an Instagram post that the horrific crash she suffered 13 seconds into one of the most hotly anticipated races at the Winter Olympics led to compartment syndrome, where excessive trauma to one area of the body builds up inside a group of muscles and the resulting pressure restricts blood flow.
Vonn, the 2010 Olympic champion and second most successful female World Cup skier of all time, credited Dr. Tom Hackett, who works for Team USA and who she said was only in Cortina because she was competing shortly after tearing the ACL in her left knee, with saving her leg.
“He saved my leg from being amputated,” Vonn said in a video, adding that she broke her tibia, fibular head and tibial plateau. “He did what’s called a fasciotomy, where he cut open both sides of my leg, kind of filleted it open, so to speak, let it breathe. And he saved me.”
Skiing with a brace on her left knee, Vonn clipped a gate with her shoulder before losing control and being launched into the air. She then barrelled off the course at high speed before coming to rest in a crumpled heap. Vonn could be heard screaming on television coverage as fans and teammates gasped in horror before a shocked hush fell on the packed finish area.
Vonn had four operations at an Italian hospital following her crash and returned to the United States last week where she had a six-hour surgery.
“It has been quite the journey and by far the most extreme and painful and challenging injury I’ve ever faced in my entire life, times 100,” Vonn said.
Vonn, who said she also broke her right ankle in the crash, has undergone multiple surgeries and said she had been in the hospital longer than she had expected. According to Vonn, she had “very low hemoglobin” from all the blood loss of all the surgeries and was really struggling while her pain was “a little bit out of control”.
She also said she had a blood transfusion that helped her turn the corner.
Vonn said it will take around a year for all of the bones to heal and then she will decide if she wants to go back into surgery and finally fix her ACL.
“But I’m going to get right to work on rehab and see what I can do and take it one step at a time, like I always do,” said Vonn. “But it’s been – I can’t tell you how painful it’s been. It’s been really hard. And it was definitely not the way I wanted to end my Olympics.”
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
