Lindsey Vonn Gives Philosophical Advice On The Difficult Part Of Pro Skiing

Ski racing is a tough career: grueling training sessions, stressful races, and inevitable injuries (when you're going 70+ mph, it's kind of unavoidable).

Retired pro ski racer Lindsey Vonn knows this better than most: from 2006 to 2018, Vonn had many serious injuries, some taking her out for the entire season.

The Olympic champion wrote to her Instagram audience of over 2 million followers, "I’ve been bruised and broken but I’ve always come out the other side a better person."

"No matter how many times I fell, I always got back up."

Some of her more major injuries include the 2007 World Championships where Vonn crashed in a slalom training run and suffered a season-ending ACL sprain.

A little while later, in the 2013 World Championships in Schladming, Austria, Vonn crashed during super-G and was airlifted to a nearby hospital.

NBC Sports reported that "Doctors diagnosed her with tears of the medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments in her right knee and a fractured tibial plateau, all of which resulted in season-ending surgery."

And at the 2016-17 World Cup, Vonn suffered a severely fractured humerus bone in her right arm in a training crash in Copper Mountain, CO, requiring surgery.

Of course her career included many other injuries, but those were a couple of the major ones, and more than most of us have in our entire lifetime.

Vonn explains, "I didn’t do it alone though. I am so thankful to have had the support of friends, family and you guys, my fans. Knowing I had people supporting me helped me in my darkest hours. Every day I tried to put one foot in front of the other until it eventually got me back to where I wanted to go… which was usually the top of the mountain 🏔️ 😍"

"We are all on our own paths, but if you’re injured or going through a hard time, believe in yourself and know that you will come out of it a better and stronger person. You got this."

Her words may have been indirectly related to the recent injury of current US ski team alpine racing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, who crashed into the safety netting during her run at the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup in Cortina d’Ampezzo but is now recovering with her partner Aleksander Aamodt Kilde. (What's in the air these days?)

Wise words. I guess that's why Vonn is a best-selling author along with being an extremely accomplished racer!

Related: Mikaela Shiffrin Crashes Hard In Downhill Race

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