Lindsey Vonn To Retire Following Alpine World Championships

LINDSEY VONN announced on Friday that she would be retiring after this month’s Alpine world championships in Sweden because her body is "broken beyond repair" and "screaming at her to stop," according to Frank Pingue of REUTERS. She posted on Instagram, "I have accepted that I cannot continue ski racing. I will compete at the World Championships in downhill and SG (super-G) next week in Are, Sweden, and they will be the final races of my career." Considered "the greatest female skier," with a record 82 World Cup wins, Vonn "had previously suggested she might compete until December." The former Olympic downhill champion "has been plagued by knee injuries." In a "lengthy post on Instagram," Vonn said that the past two weeks "had been emotional and that the decision to call time on a glittering career was the hardest of her life." She said, "I have always pushed the limits of ski racing and it has allowed me to have amazing success but also dramatic crashes. ... I am not able make the turns necessary to compete the way I know I can. My body is broken beyond repair and it isn’t letting me have the final season I dreamed of. My body is screaming at me to STOP and it’s time for me to listen" (REUTERS, 2/1). In Washington, DC, Jacob Bogage reported Vonn said that she had surgery in the spring "but chose not to share news of the procedure." She said in the Instagram post, "A large portion of cartilage that had delaminated from my bone was removed." But she crashed again in November while training in Copper Mountain, Colorado, "tearing ligaments in her knee and sustaining three fractures." She "aspired to break Ingemar Stenmark’s record of 86 World Cup race wins" but said she could not continue "even if she did not reach the mark by the end of the season." Vonn will retire with the most World Cup wins in women’s skiing history. Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proll, who retired in '80, is second with 62 victories. The closest active skier is American Mikaela Shiffrin with 55. Vonn: "Retiring without reaching my goal is what will stay with me forever" (WASHINGTON POST, 2/1).