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Lindsey Vonn isn't out of time yet but still doesn't know if she'll be able to compete in the Sochi Olympics. With the opening ceremony less than three months away, the U.S. skiing star discussed her latest knee injury, the rigors of training and her hopes of reaching Sochi with Matt Lauer of "Today."
"I still feel like I have a lot left to achieve this season, I just have to kind of take it day by day right now, but I still have time before Sochi," Vonn told Lauer during an interview on Wednesday morning.
Vonn, the reigning Olympic downhill champion, suffered a partially torn ligament in her surgically-repaired right knee during a training crash at Copper Mountain in Colorado earlier this month. The training fall came as Vonn was working her way back toward competition following February surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in that same knee. A catastrophic crash during the Alpine skiing world championships in Austria resulted in those previous ligament tears as well as a broken bone in her lower leg.
"I don't think I was pushing myself too hard,'' Vonn told Lauer when asked if her training routine could have led to her most recent injury. "It just was unfortunately a fluke accident. That's the risk you take when you're going 80-90 miles-an-hour down a mountain. That's just part of the job, but I've picked myself back up, and I'm trying as hard as I can to keep going. I'm working as hard as I can, so I'm just fingers crossed that I can be racing next week because I've worked so hard all summer to get back to this point. I just want to get back in the starting gate."
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Before her latest setback, the 29-year-old was scheduled to return to competition in the World Cup races in Beaver Creek, Colo., from Nov. 29-Dec. 1. Vonn may return to action on Dec. 6 in Lake Louise, Alberta, according to The Associated Press.
"I've been doing rehab and I've been progressing every day, but in the next couple of days I'm going to start getting on snow here at Vail and see how it feels and hopefully get a couple of days of training before I head up to Canada,'' Vonn told Lauer. "If things go well, I'll be racing next week. If they don't, then I'm going to have to reassess and kind of see where I stand and if I can make a comeback for this season. I'm feeling good from rehab. I feel stable. I put some weight on it yesterday as far as doing some weighted balance exercises and doing some squats and things like that, and it felt really good, so I'm very hopeful, but, like I said, I really don't know until I get on snow."
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