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Two days after Lindsey Vonn’s Olympic run ended in a gut-wrenching crash, another American skier nearly fell victim to the same course – in the same spot, no less.
Vonn’s accident happened only 13 seconds into her race on Sunday. The 41-year-old hooked the fourth gate with her right arm and spun out of control. When she finally came to a stop, she was screaming in pain, having suffered a possibly career-ending broken leg.
“I was simply five inches too tight on my line when my right arm hooked inside of the gate, twisting me and resulted in my crash,” explained Vonn in an Instagram post. “My ACL and past injuries had nothing to do with my crash whatsoever.”
On Tuesday, Vonn’s teammate Bella Wright was navigating the same technically demanding course when she attempted to cut a little closer to the gate than in previous attempts, as the Associated Press reports. As a result, she briefly lost her balance in the air. Unlike Vonn, she managed to avoid a crash, but still couldn’t avoid veering off-course and skiing left of the next gate – thus ending the run in the same spot as Vonn’s agonizing injury.
“I just skied it with a little more ‘oomph’ and really tried to create some speed out of it, which I did,” said Wright. “But therefore my line was just too straight and I missed that next gate.”
Fellow American skier Breezy Johnson explained that, even though she managed to navigate the spot without incident, she had also experienced similar difficulties. “It’s kind of a weird spot, “Johnson said. “Sometimes you can be in what you think is the right place, but if you hit a bump wrong it just rocks your world.”
