Lindsey has spent the last nine months painstakingly working to regain strength in her knee and earlier this month she finally hit the snow again!
For the first time since December 2013 and after nearly two years of injury misery, Lindsey clipped on her skis again in Sölden/Austria at the beginning of this month. “It was incredible to be back on snow,” she said. “I wasn’t even a tiny bit nervous to start skiing again, I was just excited. When I’m skiing, I’m happy.”
Lindsey started with a technical program to get back her security on skis. It was a step-by-step and cautious approach with different exercises for getting the feel of snow, whereas particular attention was paid to the reactions of her knee. Everybody in Lindsey’s team was excited about these crucial days and besides her coaches from the US Ski team, also her physiotherapist Lindsay Winninger as well as Robert Trenkwalder/Head of Athletes Special Projects (ASP) Red Bull with his team were there to support her. This was also the first time that Lindsey trained on skis with the new US snow coaches: So she became acquainted with the new team around her, different measures have been taken and views were exchanged by all her supporters.
Lindsey’s training on skis for the first time after such a lengthy layoff went well and as Robert said “Lindsey was happy like a little kid at Christmas, who gets the first skis from Santa Claus”.
A week later, Lindsey swapped the Rettenbacher glacier/Austria for the glacier in Saas-Fee/Switzerland for her first training in the gates. These turns on the slopes went very well and Lindsey made great progress. “I’ve been working on technique, nothing fast, just taking it slow, doing a couple of draws and gates,” she said.
The intensive ski training in Sölden and Saas-Fee was completed by physiotherapeutic measures, sessions of physical conditioning as well as fitness tests. After these successful weeks of training preparation in Europe, Lindsey then returned back home to the United States. She will skip the opening World Cup race at Sölden this weekend to work further on her comeback. But Lindsey is aiming to return to the World Cup action in her “living room” Lake Louise/Canada in December, she said “My first race will be in Lake Louise. I have enough time and there is no stress, take it easy”.
