Out for the Season

First off, thank you for all the e-mails of support and sympathy.

As many of you have heard by now, I suffered a season ending injury yesterday morning to my left knee in the DH training run at Val D’Isere. This followed the loss of my teammate, Larisa Yurkiw, to virtually the same injury the day before. At first they thought I had severed all 4 ligaments in my knee, but now it appears I may still have one. In the coming weeks the MRI, Doctor visits, and consultations will give me more details and I will be able to update you then with more information.

In the short term, my job is to try and reduce the swelling as quickly as possible, work on range of motion, and do my best to have my muscles in the best shape possible before surgery. Since the injury is so severe, I was not a candidate to do the surgery soon after the fall. My reconstruction will likely take place in approximately 3 weeks.

As many of you may share my broken heart, it is at a time like this that I feel at a loss for words. I accepted the possibility of such an injury many years ago in order to be able to ski with as little inhibitions as possible. It is for that reason that the injury itself saddens me, but I knew and accepted it was a very real risk. However, losing my chance to start in Whistler is hard to understand and accept. In my gut, I truly believed I was going to walk away from Whistler with a medal – sitting on the sidelines will be a challenging alternative.

Although it’s hard to see silver linings at times like these, I am lucky I wasn’t injured any further. I was blessed with very strong knees and I knew if I ever did anything to them it would take a big crash – which it did. Sadly, I almost recovered twice before going down. I won’t go into much detail since even writing about the crash itself brings tears to my eyes. I did watched the crash last night – I figured I’d get that experience out of the way, and start my recovery process right away both mentally and physically. I take comfort in knowing I felt good on my skis yesterday, I had fun in warm up and I was challenging to the line to see what I could do come race day. I had some beautiful jumps that made me smile, and carved some turns that felt fantastic. I will try and remember those moments, before the crash, and know that I still love what I do.

Upon leaving my team, I joked with them saying this may have actually extended my career since now more than ever I have unfinished business on the hill. I also made sure the girls knew how much I believed in them, their abilities, and wished for nothing more than for them to find joy on their skis (which we all know leads to fast skiing as well). With how well my training was going and with how much fun I was having on my skis I will truly miss skiing over this next stretch.

In Val D’Isere I was taken very good care of by the hills medical group (who know the Canadians far too well) and by my team’s Doctor Tim, physio Gen, and all the coaches, staff, and athletes. Heck, I was eating a crepe, on morphine, with a beer by mid afternoon – they certainly knew how to take care of me!

I’m writing this from my airplane seat with Lufthansa, half the staff knew who I was and a few had seen my crash on the news last night. So here too, I am being well taken care of. However, home is where my heart is and where I know I’m looking forward to a massive hug from David.

We will heal together and this too shall pass.

With Love and Thanks,

Kelly