Lindsey Vonn Will Skip Beaver Creek World Cup Due to Knee Injury

The champion downhill skier tore her ACL earlier this week in training.

Lindsey Vonn will skip the World Cup races next week in Beaver Creek, Colo., as she recovers from a downhill training crash in which she partially tore one of the reconstructed ligaments in her surgically repaired right knee.

The reigning Olympic downhill champion will continue to go through therapy on her knee and is not ruling out a possible return to racing in Lake Louise, Alberta, the following week, her personal publicist, Lewis Kay, said in a statement Friday.

The Sochi Games are less than three months away and it's unclear whether her recent crash will affect her Olympic aspirations.

The four-time overall World Cup champion fell in a training run earlier this week at Copper Mountain, hurting the same knee Vonn injured in a high-speed crash at the world championships in February. She also suffered minor facial abrasions and a bruised shoulder blade, which are on the mend.

"Beyond that, she has a stable knee with an MRI finding of a partial tear of her ACL graft," her surgeon, Dr. Bill Sterett, said. "With therapy, she is progressing well while not losing any of the strength she worked so hard to achieve."

Vonn, who lives in Vail, was looking forward to making her season debut in Beaver Creek on a new women's course set up ahead of the 2015 world championships. Vonn knows Lake Louise quite well, though, and has been so successful there — winning 14 times — that it's become known as "Lake Lindsey."

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