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Lindsey Vonn's season ends due to injury

Kai DambachMarch 2, 2016

The 2010 Winter Olympic downhill gold medalist will not compete in the remaining events of the Alpine Skiing World Cup. Vonn confirmed the news through her official social media channels.

https://p.dw.com/p/1I5Uv
Ski Super-G - Lindsey Vonn
Image: Getty Images/C. Pallot

Leader Lindsey Vonn will not come back to the World Cup this season after fracturing her left knee on Saturday. "This is one of the toughest decisions of my career," she said in a lengthy Facebook post.

Vonn was on top of the leaderboard of the World Cup standings after the weekend, when further MRI and CT scans revealed there was not just one hairline fracture, but three, and significant enough to potentially cause further injury if she continued.

"Further damage [to] any of the fragments could result in a serious surgery that would risk my future in ski racing. With the World Championships in St. Moritz next year and the Winter Olympics in South Korea the following year, I cannot take that risk," she added.

Vonn won 20 World Cup trophies, nine of them this season - the most World Cup discipline titles of any skier - and broke the World Cup downhill win record.

This is far from her first injury setback in her career. Vonn suffered her greatest setback after a crash during a training run in 2013 when she tore her ACL and damaged joints and her MCL in her surgically-repaired knee, keeping her out of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

She also suffered a concussion in the 2011 World Championships and a season-ending ACL sprain during the 2007 World Championships.