Lindsey Vonn To Delay ACL Surgery, Tiger Woods' Girlfriend Still Hoping To Compete At Sochi Winter Olympics

By Paul John Rivera| Dec 03, 2013

Lindsey Vonn announced the she will delay further operations on her right knee in hopes of competing in the upcoming 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Vonn sustained another partial ACL tear in her surgically-repaired right knee when she crashed during one of her training sessions two weeks ago at Copper Mountain.

Another surgery is required to reconstruct the torn knee ligament, but Vonn still wants to test whether or not she can compete at a high level without undergoing operation, saying that she is planning to delay the surgery until after the current skiing season.

"I probably would've done what I'm doing right now, test it out," Vonn said in a statement via ESPN. "If I felt like it was possible to keep skiing, I probably would've. Either way, at the end of the season, I have to reconstruct the ACL. So it's kind of like, might as well see how long it holds up. Not a lot of options. In the end, surgery is going to have to happen."

Vonn, who has been working hard to get back in shape so as to have a good chance of defending his Olympic downhill title in February's Sochi Olympics, had three aggressive warm-up runs on Sunday. After her training session, the 29-year-old skiing champ said that her knee felt good.

Vonn is set to travel to Alberta later this week for her downhill training in which she will gauge whether or not she is ready to race for the first time since sustaining the devastating ACL injury in her right knee at the World Championship in February.

"Just trying to ski solid. I'm not trying to do race runs. I'm trying to build into it. Not push it too hard. But I was still be able to be aggressive and confident in what I'm doing so that when I get up to Lake Louise I can hopefully have a good feeling right away," Vonn said.

The two-time World Championships gold medalist initially planned to compete at the Beaver Creek races, but the partial ACL tear derailed her comeback attempt.

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