Image courtesy of Alessando Trovati/AP
For six days, the world has watched, waited, and celebrated as their countries’ preeminent athletes have competed for medals, records, and ultimately a place in history among Olympic greats. The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi have unfolded with every bit of excitement and glory that one could expect from the world’s best. But while the spring-like temperatures that made for slushy halfpipes and treacherous downhill courses may have made some victories even sweeter, for others, they made the Olympic experience all too short.
As an avid fan of the Olympics, I’ve watched the Sochi games every night to see who would grab the gold. But I’ve also watched in horror as dreams have been lost in terrifying crash after crash. For example, the other night I watched as 18 of the 50 women competing in the women’s Super-G did not finish the course. In that particular event, where seven of the first eight competitors did not reach the bottom, gold-medal winner Anna Fenninger has been described as not having won “so much as she survived the slopes.”
While the athletes who did not finish are left with frustration and disappointment, for many others, the pain goes far deeper. Luckily, the extreme injuries have been few and far between; for many of the injured, Sochi has delivered low blows to the knees.
- On Feb 6, one day before joining her U.S. teammates for her first ever Olympic opening ceremonies, 21-year-old Heidi Kloser was carried off the moguls course after suffering a fully torn ACL in her right knee during a warm-up run.
- Norway’s Helene Olafsen had to drop out of the snowboardcross competition after suffering a knee injury during qualifying rounds.
- With the bronze medal within reach, Italy's Michela Moioli ruptured a ligament in her knee after a fall in the final round of snowboardcross. She returned home to undergo surgery.
Lyman Currier - Sochi 2014
- On Tuesday, 19-year-old Lyman Currier’s Olympic debut was cut short during his last run in the finals of the ski halfpipe. Though he skied off the course, it was later reported that he suffered a fully torn ACL.
- Five-time Olympian Bode Miller recently announced that he tweaked his surgically repaired left knee during the first run of the giant slalom on Wednesday and will not be able to ski in this weekend’s slalom competition.
“We see knee injuries in all athletes – runners, basketball players, soccer players – but a lot of the winter sports like skiing and snowboarding present unique stresses on the body,” said James Carey, MD, assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and director of the Penn Center for Cartilage Repair and Osteochondritis Dissecans Treatment. “Our knees are particularly challenged by collisions at high speeds as well as by the rotational forces that skis and boards can generate.”
Kloser, Olafsenm and the rest of the injured may be out of the race, but they arrived on Olympic slopes with their ligaments intact. For other Olympic hopefuls who were injured before the games began, the choice to fight for their dreams or wait four more years came months before.
Some were able to put their injuries aside and forge ahead – Russ Henshaw competes in the ski slopestyle without an ACL after tearing it in 2011 and placed eighth in the Sochi games, and earlier this week, Canadian Matt Margetts, skiing with a torn ACL, finished 15th in the men’s ski halfpipe finals. But for others, knee injuries mean waiting four more long years.
U.S. skiing superstar Lindsey Vonn had every intention of staging a comeback in Sochi, but instead, she’s at home, working hard to rehabilitate an injured right knee. A year ago, Vonn was injured during a crash at the Alpine skiing world championships in Austria, tearing both her ACL and MLC, and fracturing her tibia. Though she planned to be ready in time for the winter games, Vonn suffered another setback when she reinjured one of the partially repaired ligaments in November. Now, as anxious as she is to return to the slopes – even exercising her knee four to six hours per day to get it back where it once was – patience will be key. A knee is fully functional when the patient regains normal range of motion and strength and can do sport-specific tasks without pain, Carey said in an article posted on Today.com on Vonn’s injury.
“It may take 18 months before the athlete is like, ‘I don’t remember which knee it was,’” Carey said in the article. “It may be 18 months to be an A plus, to be 100 percent, but we think it’s safe to return at six months when they are an A minus.”
For Canada’s Kaya Turski, dreams of an Olympic debut in Sochi were enough for her to undergo experimental surgery that she hoped would have her recovered from a reinjured ACL in six months – nearly half the necessary recovery time for a repeat ACL tear. Initially doctors told her she may not even be on the snow in six months, never mind competition ready. But for Turski, a gold-medal favorite at the Olympics, getting to Sochi wasn’t up for discussion. After weighting her options – a synthetic ACL would provide a quick return to slopes but wouldn’t last as a long-term solution, but a cadaver graft would take far too long to strengthen – surgeons offered her a hybrid option in which a synthetic ligament was wrapped inside a cadaver graft. Ideally, the new solution would offer the best of both worlds: the immediate strength of the synthetic ACL and the longevity of the natural ligament.
“With an elite athlete, we commonly prefer to use a portion of the athlete’s own patellar tendon or hamstring tendon to reconstruct the ruptured ACL,” said Carey. “However, in cases where there have been previous injuries to the ACL, some of these options have already been exhausted. In those cases, using tissue from the athlete’s other knee, or using cadaver tissue are excellent options. Augmenting with a synthetic tether is an option to consider as well, though each provides it’s unique challenges in terms of recovery time and longevity.”
Turski’s hybrid procedure got her to Russia. Less than six months after her surgery, she took to the slopes and skied for Canada. Sadly, her knee, paired with a virus that was wearing her down, caused her to fall twice in qualifying rounds and brought an abrupt end to her Olympic debut.
“You know, it's definitely disappointing. I've worked so hard, I poured my heart and soul into the last sixth months. That's exactly what I did and I wouldn't change it," Turski said in an article posted on USA Today. "I think I did an incredible thing just dropping in today. I'm proud to say I'm an Olympian now."