The Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina D'Ampezzo took a devastating turn Sunday, February 8, when Lindsey Vonn, who was already competing with a shattered ACL, appeared to have further injured herself when she crashed early into her run on the famed Olympia delle Tofane slope.
The Olympic skier, who ruptured her ACL just nine days ago, but insisted she would be able to compete nonetheless, ran into a gate as she ascended off a jump, then got turned sideways and fell hard onto the snow.
Her hopes of reclaiming the downhill gold medal came to an end after only 13 seconds, and she was subsequently airlifted out of the area.
Though this appears to be among the first of serious injuries during this Winter Olympics, several other athletes have suffered similarly devastating — some fatal — injuries during or leading up to the Winter Olympics, with the 2018 event in Pyeongchang having had an especially high volume of injuries and crashes.
Revisit just some of them below.
1/5
© Getty ImagesNodar Kumaritashvili
Nodar was a 21-year-old Georgian luge athlete who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, on the day the opening ceremony took place.
It was his final training run after 25 previous attempts; he lost control in the last turn of the course and was thrown off his luge and over the sidewall of the track, crashing against an unpadded steel support pole at the end of the run. He died from massive blunt force injuries to his head and torso.
2/5
© Getty ImagesSarah Burke
Sarah was a 29-year-old a Canadian freestyle skier, a pioneer of the superpipe event who died following a training accident in Utah in 2012 just before the sport debuted in the Olympics, after she successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to have the event added to the Olympic program for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Sarah died after training on the Park City Mountain Resort Eagle superpipe in Park City, Utah, during which she landed on her head, and soon after went into cardiac arrest. She underwent neurosurgery to repair a tear in a vertebral artery, and died of the injuries nine days after the accident.
3/5
© Getty ImagesMarkus Shairer
Markus, 38, is an Austrian snowboarder who in 2018, during the Olympics in Pyeongchang, suffered a fracture of the fifth cervical vertebra during a fall in a quarterfinal heat. He crashed after he got high off a jump and landed on his back with such force that his goggles flew off, but was luckily confirmed to be in stable condition and didn't suffer any neurological issues.
4/5
© Getty Images,Jessica Rich
Jessica, 35, is an Australian snowboarder who, not unlike Lindsey, competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics just one month after rupturing her ACL. She ultimately ended one place shy of qualifying for the final after placing 13th in the qualification runs at Pyeongchang.
5/5
© Getty ImagesMons Roisland
Mons, 29, is a Norwegian snowboarder, who during a training session ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics broke his chest bone and tore a shoulder ligament in what he described as the biggest crash of his life, per Reuters.
