Skiers back Vonn's call to race at Olympics, even after crash - ESPN

The fallout from Lindsey Vonn's devastating crash in the Olympic downhill on a severely injured knee prompted a key question: Should she have been allowed on a course that is dangerous even to perfectly healthy skiers?

The resounding answer on social media was no. The answer from the skiing community remains yes.

«People that don't know ski racing don't really understand what happened yesterday,» Vonn's teammate Keely Cashman said Monday. «She hooked her arm on the gate, which twisted her around. She was going probably 70 mph, and so that twists your body around.»

Vonn lost control within seconds of leaving the start house Sunday, clipping the gate with her right shoulder and pinwheeling down the slope before ending up awkwardly on her back, her skis crisscrossed below her and her screams ringing out as medical personnel arrived.

She was taken to a clinic in Cortina then transferred to a larger hospital in Treviso, a two-hour drive to the south. Vonn «underwent an orthopedic operation to stabilize a fracture reported in her left leg,» the Ca' Foncello hospital said in a statement.

The hospital initially said it would release an update Monday then said more information regarding Vonn's condition would come from her team.

Cashman defended what happened to Vonn, saying the crash had «nothing to do with her ACL, nothing to do with her knee» and calling the public's assumptions «totally incorrect.»

«I think a lot of people are ridiculing that, and a lot of people don't [know] what's going on,» Cashman said.

Vonn, a four-time overall World Cup champion, had looked like an Olympic contender in her return to competition after nearly six years. But she ruptured an ACL and sustained a bone bruise and meniscus damage in a training