"One short week after Lindsey Vonn crashed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and tore her left anterior cruciate ligament, she was tearing down the hill in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, a light knee brace warping the fabric of her racing suit the only obvious sign of anything amiss. When she finished the training run Friday, clocking the third-fastest time for a U.S. woman on the day, she casually fist bumped an American teammate at the finish line."
""It's atypical to be able to compete without an ACL, at anything, but especially at a high level like Lindsey Vonn's going to compete at," said Clint Soppe, a board certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai. "So this is very surprising news to me as well." The ACL, which connects the shin bone to the femur, is a main stabilizing force in the knee and protects the lower leg from sliding forward."
""If you add cutting, pivoting, changing directions, in 95% of humans, you need an ACL to do that," said Kevin Farmer, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at the University of Florida's department of orthopedics and sports medicine. "She's obviously fallen into that 5%." Farmer calls the rare group "copers." They overcome the lack of an ACL by strengthening and engaging other muscles."
Lindsey Vonn crashed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, tore her left anterior cruciate ligament, and competed nine days later in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, wearing a light knee brace. She recorded the third-fastest training run time for a U.S. woman and finished with a casual fist bump at the line. The ACL connects the shin bone to the femur, stabilizes the knee and prevents the lower leg from sliding forward. Straight-line movement places little stress on the ACL, but cutting, pivoting and changing direction generally require an intact ACL in roughly 95% of people. A small subset called copers compensates by strengthening and engaging other muscles, primarily the hamstrings and quadriceps.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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