Janica Kostelic may take winter off to regroup from injuries

Janica Kostelic may take winter off to regroup from injuries{mosimage}Olympic champion and 2005-06 World Cup overall champion Janica Kostelic may not race the season opening at Soelden, Austria, and may sit out the entire season as she regroups from a grinding season.

“Janica will officially announce in the middle of September if she feels strong enough to compete during the coming season or if she prefers resting to recover all her potential,” said Dr. Ozren Mueller, press manager of the Croatian ski team. “She is not injured or sick, but her knees are still sore from all the efforts from the past seasons and she feels somehow tired from the past winter. It has been a pretty tough one for her — she was also sick during several weeks in January and February and she spent a lot of energy to get over it.”

Kostelic, who has not trained this summer as intensively as usual, spent some time on the island of Mljet last month before moving to Rijeka, on the Adriatic Coast, to visit some friends.

The 24-year-old Croatian, who received the 2006 Laureus Comeback Award last spring in Barcelona, Spain, might deserve a break after her exhausting 2006-06 season.

Kostelic clinched her third overall title at Are, Sweden, in March, with a total of 1,970 points — a record on the women’s tour. She won nine World Cup events in all five disciplines, including the new super combined introduced in 2005 on the World Cup tour.

She also successfully defended her Olympic title in combined at Sestriere and won another silver medal in super G, but she failed medal in slalom and didn’t start in downhill and giant slalom. With a total of nine gold medals at World Championships and Olympics Games since 2002, Kostelic is the most successful woman in the history of modern ski racing.

Last winter, she became only the second female athlete — Austria’s Petra Kronberger is the other — to win World Cup races in all alpine events during the same season.

Three years ago, Kostelic suffered from severe pain in her knees and from functional disorders of her thyroid, which forced her to take a six-month break after undergoing surgery in the middle of the winter. She pulled off an amazing comeback the following season, capturing three gold medals at the 2005 worlds in Santa Caterina. She lost the overall World Cup title to Sweden’s Anja Paerson by only three points at the 2005 finals in Lenzerheide.

At the Torino Games, Kostelic said she planned to keep competing until the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver, so another break may well help her to remain focused and motivated.