First gold of this Olympics won by Switzerland in the men’s downhill skiing.
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Rule 6 (Chapter 1) of the Olympic Charter reads: “The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries.”
It’s a real pity the time wasted in country medal counts and anthems.
Pity no-one has told the IOC or indeed most of the countries participating.
Agree! They should actually do sponsor counts and company jingles. https://youtu.be/KW9cuta7mdE
I see the US skier with the wonky knee barely made it past the first gate in the Woman’s downhill. She had to be treated on the slope and airlifted to hospital. According to the BBC the long delay would also mean the snow on the piste would begin to melt in the midday sun, and therefore it would be unlikely that anyone would beat her compatriot Johnson’s time of one minute 36.10 seconds.
Unfit athletes shouldn’t be allowed to compete.
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Completed 2 training runs with no problems.
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And ruined the chances for many other competitors.
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“The US skier with the wonky knee” you mean “Lindsay Vonn the second most successful female alpine skier of all time”??
If you watch the crash, her knee didn’t cause it, she caught her arm in a gate which spun her around.
By the sounds of those screams I reckon it was a fracture or dislocation. Nasty.
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I very much doubt that was her intention.
You make it sound as though she deliberately sabotaged the other skiers which is a pretty serious accusation to make.
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Her knee didn’t cause the crash! Her line and arm caused the crash. Would have happened with a good knee!
I think “might have happened with a good knee!” would be a fairer statement. Yes, the impact with the control gate caused the rotation that lead to her crashing but the weakness of the knee may be a contributory factor to her not recovering the rotation on landing.
And what do we say the the 23 sports women that were due to follow her down the piste? That someone who couldn’t handle a missed jump put them out of contention? The Gold and Silver winners both started before she did. The Bronze winner started two places after her.
I love a good conspiracy theory. Just think how they changed the rules to stop Eddie the Eagle competing.
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I’m certainly not saying she did it on purpose. But she was unfit and she screwed it up for others.
Pretty much no one can land a hooked gate at that speed. An ACL wouldn’t have helped her.
She obviously felt she was fit enough to do it or she wouldn’t have started. You wouldn’t risk that sort of injury if you didn’t think you were capable of finishing the race. It could have a massive impact on her career.
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Interested to know how having a left ACL would have enabled her to recover and land this………..? She was airborne from before hooking the gate until she impacted the ground on her right side.
Well a fit world class athlete wouldn’t have missed the gate in the first place.
Looking at the video again I see the ski’s are much further twisted over than I first thought so yes, probably irrecoverable. However I compared her line at that corner to Johnson and it is clear the mistake was made before the gate. Vonnˋs line was too high / far to the right and caused her to jump and strike the gate in mid-air. Johnson didn’t even jump there. Could be the weak knee prevented her from taking a better line.
For practice the snow was softer and slower.
From various media reports
Vonn was airlifted off the piste to Ca Foncello hospital in Trevizo, around 130km from Olimpia delle Tofane in the Dolomites, following lengthy treatment.
The hospital issued a statement which said she had undergone “orthopedic surgery to stabilize the fracture she sustained in her left leg” - the same leg with the torn ACL.