Vail’s Lindsey Vonn finished fifth in the super combined at the world alpine championships Friday in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Swiss star Lara Gut was taken from the mountain by helicopter after suffering a knee injury on a day marked by flat light and heavy snowfall that created poor visibility.
The Swiss ski federation announced Gut tore her left anterior cruciate ligament and suffered meniscus damage. Gut is likely out the rest of this season.
Gut stood third after the morning downhill run but crashed while warming up before the afternoon slalom. She has been engaged in a compelling duel with EagleVail’s Mikaela Shiffrin in the World Cup overall standings this season.
Gut is the defending World Cup overall champion and is only 180 points behind Shiffrin, but if the injury ends her season, Shiffrin would go into the remaining 11 World Cup races with a commanding lead of 414 points over the next racer in the standings, Sofia Goggia of Italy.
There's a huge pit in my stomach hearing about @Laragut 's injury. Wishing her a speedy recovery 😥😞. #comebackstronger 💪🏼👊🏼
— Mikaela Shiffrin (@MikaelaShiffrin) February 10, 2017
“I saw the video they’ve been playing on Eurosport,” Vonn said of Gut’s crash in a finish-area interview with NBC, “and it looks like her left knee is injured, hopefully not too bad. The light was flat and the snow was soft in warm-up. I hope she’s not badly injured.”
Vonn skied out of Monday’s super-G after losing the grip on her right pole because the strength in her right hand is compromised by nerve damage suffered in a November training crash. She raced Friday with her pole fastened to her right hand with duct tape.
Vonn finished sixth in the downhill, 0.85 of a second behind Goggia, and was off the podium by 0.47 of a second after the slalom run. Wendy Holdener of Switzerland claimed the gold medal with teammate Michelle Gisin taking silver and Michaela Kirchgasser of Austria the bronze.
“I hit a gate on my face on like the third gate, but I think on the bottom part I skied really well,” Vonn said of her slalom run, “I’m really happy with it. Fifth is ok.”
Vonn missed more than a month of the season because of her injury and has been back racing less than a month. Her best chance for a medal at these world championships always figured to be Sunday’s downhill, her best discipline.
“It was good to charge in the (combined) downhill,” Vonn said. “It still wasn’t my best skiing, but I think it was a really positive step forward. It’s nice to get race simulated downhill under my belt. We have one more training run (Saturday), but at least now I know the course is getting slicker. Just getting more information and adjusting my line here and there.”
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