CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Lindsey Vonn’s father said Monday that the American superstar will no longer race if he has any influence on her decision and that she will not return to the Winter Olympics after breaking her left leg during the weekend’s descent.
“She is 41 years old and this is the end of her career,” Alan Kildow said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “There will be no more ski racing for Lindsey Vonn as long as I have a say in it.”
Kildow and the rest of Vonn’s family – a brother and two sisters – have been with Vonn while she was treated at a hospital in Treviso following her fall and helicopter evacuation from the course in Cortina on Sunday.
Vonn said this late Monday on Instagram that she suffered a “complex tibial fracture that is currently stable but will require multiple surgeries to properly recover.”
Kildow declined to comment on the injuries, but he did share how Vonn was doing emotionally.
“She’s a very strong individual,” Kildow said. “She knows physical pain and she understands the circumstances she’s in. And she can handle it. Better than I expected. She’s a very, very strong person. And so I think she’s handling it very well.”
Kildow – himself a former ski racer who taught his daughter to race – said he slept in his daughter’s hospital room overnight. “She always has someone – or several people – with her,” Kildow said. “As long as she’s here, there will be people.” Kildow and the rest of Vonn’s family watched the crash from the finish area along with all the other spectators.
“First of all, the shock and horror of the whole thing, seeing a crash like that,” Kildow said of what he felt as he watched the scene unfold. “It can be dramatic and traumatic. You’re just shocked at the consequences that those kinds of consequences have.”
“You can go into shock, an emotional psychological shock,” he added. “Because it’s hard to just accept what happened. But she’s being well taken care of. … And the USOC and the U.S. Ski Team have a very, very top-notch doctor with them and she’s being very well taken care of here in Italy.”
Vonn raced the downhill despite tearing the ACL in her left knee in another crash nine days earlier.
“What happened to her had nothing to do with the ACL problem on her left leg. Nothing,” Kildow said. “She had demonstrated that she could function at a very high level on the two runs. … And she had been cleared by high-level doctors to ski.”
Kildow said the crash was less a result of Vonn’s knee injury than of the way she pushed the boundaries of her racing line to the point where she clipped a fence early in her run and spiraled out of control.
“There are times in every race, but especially on the descent, where you have to reduce some speed,” he said. “You can give yourself a little more leeway so you don’t put yourself in a questionable position.”
Vonn, who holds a record 12 World Cup victories in Cortina, returned to the circuit last season after nearly six years of retirement and following partial titanium replacement surgery on her right knee. She won two downhill races and finished on the podium in seven of the eight World Cup races she completed this season – and came fourth in the other.
“She won 84 World Cup races. And not many people do that,” Kildow said, referring to Vonn’s win total, which puts her second on the women’s all-time list, behind teammate By Mikaela Shiffrin record 108 wins.
“And there’s a lot of difference between a speed race, especially a downhill one, and a slalom,” Kildow added.
Vonn will not return to the Olympics to cheer on teammates or for anything else, Kildow said. “No, she’s not in that situation,” he said. “She will go home at an appropriate time.”
