It was not the 90 seconds Lindsey Vonn thought she would need to will herself through the women’s downhill final without an ACL in her left knee.
Rather, it was only 13.
Near the top of the course, the 41-year-old caught her right arm on a gate, sending her off balance in what made for a horrific crash early Sunday morning to bring her monumental Olympic comeback story to an end.
While it could be assumed the fall happened due to a lack of an ACL or something more complex, given Vonn’s ability and the stakes of the race, the issue was more simplistic.
It was something “that could have happened to anyone and resulted in a crash,” Martina Sailer, a longtime family friend and the daughter of Vonn’s childhood coach, Erich Sailer, who died in August last year, told The Post in a text message on Sunday.
“She put everything on the line and her crash had nothing to do with her ruptured ACL,” she said after watching the race in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, citing that Vonn “hooked” her arm on the gate.
“My dad would have said she got unlucky.”
The three-time Olympic medalist was put on a stretcher and airlifted from the course to a hospital. About 20 minutes later, the race resumed.
Vonn was taken to a hospital in Treviso and underwent two operations after suffering a serious leg fracture, and was later moved to intensive care.
“I felt crushed and heartbroken for her. It happened so fast,” Sailer said.
It was one thing to decide to come out of retirement after an injury forced her to do so in 2019.
It was a whole other thing for an ACL-less Vonn to put her body on the line again for another shot at Olympic glory.
Vonn “redefined trying,” as Sailer put it.
“She put in the work. She earned her spot. She was a real contender even with her newest injury, and she knew the potential consequences,” she said. “I knew she could be a contender before the injury but I truly believe she’s so incredibly strong that she was a medal contender even with the injury – that’s next level commitment.”
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“I told my girls that not every story has a happy ending, but Lindsey should have no regrets — what she accomplished this year was spectacular,” added Sailer, who has two young ski racing daughters, Greta and Lulu. “With time, she will recover and write the rest of her story.”
American Breezy Johnson went on to win gold with a time of 1:36.10 after setting an early pace as the sixth racer to fly down the course.
The victory was Team USA’s first gold medal of the Milan Cortina Olympics, and Johnson became the second American woman to win Olympic gold in the women’s downhill – Vonn was the first in the 2010 Vancouver Games.
Outside of her gold, Vonn has a bronze medal from the 2010 Super-G and a bronze in the 2018 downhill in PyeongChang.
