Let’s hope Lindsey Vonn‘s knee doesn’t feel as bad as it looks. Less than a week after she underwent surgery to repair two torn ligaments in her right leg — the painful result of her Feb. 5 accident during the super-G at the Alpine Ski World Championships in Austria — the 28-year-old Olympic gold medalist shared a picture of the injury on Twitter. And it was gruesome.
The photo, posted on Feb. 15, showed Vonn’s swollen limb covered in cuts and large, dark bruises, with several bandages covering up surgical scars. “My knee looks…um…not very good…” she captioned the grisly snapshot. Then she added: “Long skirts this summer. Ugh.”
According to her doctor and U.S. Ski Team officials, the four-time World Champion is expected to miss the rest of this season. She could be ready to compete again in the 2013-14 World Cup, which begins in October, and in the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia — but as her sister Laura Kildow noted in a blog post about the accident, she has a long road to recovery ahead of her.
Kildow wrote about the crash on her website on Monday, Feb. 18, recalling how Vonn was going “so fast, that she flew farther off of the jump than the racers before her. She went into a track on the course no one had skied or slipped. Her right ski sunk into a pile of snow, stopping her speed and causing her to summersault [sic] into a gate and crash going 70 miles per hour. Sliding down the hill she finally stopped, her cries were agonizing.”
Kildow says her sister won’t be down for long, though. In fact, she only waited a day after surgery to hit the gym.
“Falling is part of the game, and getting up is what defines you,” Kildow wrote of her famous sibling. “Lindsey might not have two legs to walk on yet, but she has her fans, family, and friends to support her until she can.”
Among those friends is rumored love interest Tiger Woods. Two days before her surgery, Vonn got a very posh ride home aboard the scandal-prone golfer’s private plane. The two have been linked romantically since at least November, when they hit the slopes together in Austria.
