The Science of How Olympian Lindsey Vonn Can Ski on Injured Knees

Lindsey Vonn’s knees reveal excellent skiing ability and body flexibility

by Tanya Lewis Edited by Andrea Thompson

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Lindsey Vonn is a physical marvel. The 41-year-old Olympic gold medal-winning skier has, quite literally, reached the top of her game and has stayed there despite several injuries that could have been career-ending.

In 2018 she announced that she was retiring the following year, citing concerns about her physical condition with increasing age. But in 2024 she returned to the competition after remarkable success partial knee replacement surgery On his right knee. She was all set to compete at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics this week when she crashed in a race in Crans-Montana on January 30 and anterior cruciate ligament rupture (ACL) on his other knee. Still, the world-class skier says she still plans to compete at the Games.

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“My Olympic dream is not over,” she wrote on Instagram last week.

Downhill skiing is a punishing sport. Typical skiers can reach speeds above 80 mph, and because kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity, it exerts a considerable force on the body. And the knees are affected the most. If your weight is centered on your skis and you’re in control, this isn’t a problem. But if you, say, go too far back on your skis, or you land the wrong way, it creates a shear force on the knee that can cause injury.

Vaughn has suffered repeated damage to his ligaments over the years, and this can loosen the joint and cause problems. Sam Ward, co-director of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at the University of California, San Diego, compared it to the wear and tear of a tire. “At first, it hurts,” he says. “Secondly, as you lose tread on your tires, you can imagine things becoming a little looser when you’re driving,” says Ward, who is an orthopedic surgeon but has not treated Vaughn. If the joint is painful and inflamed, it changes the way your brain controls the knee, he says. According to , Vonn could not walk without pain or a limp and was unable to straighten her knee. new York Times.

In 2024 Vonn underwent robotic surgery to partially replace her right knee with titanium – effectively reinventing the wheel. The knee consists of three major components: the lower end of the femur (thigh bone), the upper end of the tibia (shinbone), and the patella (kneecap), all of which are covered with cartilage. Unlike total knee replacement, in which all three bones and parts of the cartilage are removed and replaced with artificial ones, partial knee replacement involves replacing only one of these parts, leaving healthy ligaments intact. Using a surgical robot made by MAKO Surgical Corp., Martin Roche, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in West Palm Beach, Florida, created a scan of her knee, removed damaged cartilage and bone in minimally invasive surgery and installed titanium implants.

The surgery was successful: Vonn was able to straighten her knee again, and after two months, she was wakeboarding on it. Times Informed. She returned to ski competition soon after.

Vonn was preparing to return to the Olympics at Milano-Cortina when she tore her ACL last week. He announced that he also had a bone bruise and damage to his meniscus – a thin, crescent-shaped piece of cartilage in the knee that acts as a shock absorber.

The ACL is a ligament that connects the shin bone to the thigh bone. It provides rotational stability to the knee. ACL tears are one of the Most Common Injuries Not just in skiing but in many sports. and they are more common in female athletesBecause women have looser joints and less muscle mass than men and they land differently from jumping.

Vonn appears to have suffered a lot of trauma in her latest injury, possibly due to the terrain and her stiff boots, and she suffered what’s known as a “recovery” in skiing — basically, when you get unbalanced and have to get into an unusual position, but you don’t fall — according to Christopher Brown, a former All-American ski racer and ski coach, as well as a mechanical and materials engineering major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His skis “got caught,” says Professor Christopher Brown. Skis have very sharp edges that are designed to grip the snow to help change direction. And if the skis turn under you, and you have stiff boots that limit motion, you can apply a shear load to the top of the tibia or shinbone, causing what’s called a “valgus load” – a force toward the midline of the body – and inward rotation. “This is the most common injury mechanism for the ACL in skiing,” says Brown.

ACL tears sometimes require surgery to reconstruct the ligament, although not always. You can ski with a torn ACL, but the knee has less stability. Vaughn said plan to ski with brace In the Olympics.

Ward says that as impressive as Vaughn’s physical ability is, a big part of it is his mental toughness. “The mental part of the game is huge here,” he says. It remains to be seen whether Vonn will be able to win a gold medal at this Olympics. “I’m not a betting person,” Ward says, “but if I were a betting person, I wouldn’t bet against this guy.”

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