CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — The fallout from Lindsey Vonn’s devastating crash in the Olympic downhill on a severely injured knee included a key question: Should she have even 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.Nine days before Sunday’s crash, the 41-year-old American said she had ruptured the ACL in her left knee. It is an injury that sidelines pro athletes for months, but ski racers have on occasion competed that way. She appeared stable in two downhill training runs at the Milan Cortina Games.When she arrived in Cortina last week, Vonn said she had consulted with her team of physicians and trainers before deciding to move ahead with racing. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) does not check on the injury statuses of athletes.”I firmly believe that this has to be decided by the individual athlete,” FIS president Johan Eliasch said Monday in Bormio. “And in her case, she certainly knows her injuries on her body better than anybody else. And if you look around here today with all the athletes, the athletes yesterday, every single athlete has a small injury of some kind.“What is also important for people to understand, that the accident that she had yesterday, she was incredibly unlucky. It was a one in a 1,000,” Eliasch added. “She got too close to the gate, and she got stuck when she was in the air in the gate and started rotating. No one can recover from that, unless yo …
