TORINO: Alpine: Koznick's ACL was completely torn all along, says doctor

By Published On: February 22nd, 2006Comments Off on TORINO: Alpine: Koznick's ACL was completely torn all along, says doctor

TORINO: Alpine: Koznick’s ACL was completely torn all along, says doctor{mosimage}Kristina Koznick raced Wednesday’s Olympic women’s slalom with a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, contrary to official reports that the ligament was just partially torn.

‘It was a complete tear’ said Dr. William Sterett of Colorado, who will reconstruct the ligament in surgery next week in Vail. ‘I saw in the paper that it was partial, but it was definitely a complete tear all along. She was pretty heroic racing today.’

As late as Wednesday night, after Koznick finished the first run of the slalom, the United States Olympic Committee was distributing press releases that said that ‘Koznick partially tore ligaments in her knee’ during a training run three weeks ago.

On Sunday, the U.S. Ski Team invited reporters to join a teleconference with Koznick, sending out e-mails that said the tear was partial.

According to Sterett, the complete tear was obvious from his first examination of Koznick around the time of the opening ceremony on Feb. 10 (“plus or minus a day,” by his memory). His examination included evaluation of magnetic resonance images.

‘You could see that on an MRI and on her examination’ said Sterett, reached on his cell phone. ‘When you do an examination, it was clearly completely torn.’

Koznick raced with a Swiss-made brace on her leg in Wednesday’s slalom, finshing more that three seconds out on the first run.

“Today I was almost crying when I see Kozzie coming down the slope,” said the race winner, Anja Paerson of Sweden.

“It just tore my heart,” said Paerson about coming upon Koznick at Ofterschwang, just after the American’s injury. “I told her at the finish that you have to be proud of your achievements, because just being in the start was amazing.”

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About the Author: Pete Rugh