{"id":2446971,"date":"2019-07-30T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T02:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/unbroken-and-undeterred\/"},"modified":"2019-07-30T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T02:32:00","slug":"unbroken-and-undeterred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/unbroken-and-undeterred\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbroken and undeterred"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
U.S. Ski Team member Alice McKennis works on her core muscles at the Minturn Fitness Club earlier this month.<\/strong>
Chris Dillmann | cdillmann@vaildaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

EAGLEVAIL \u2014 Alice McKennis could feel her leg twisting, twisting, twisting as she fell toward the snow.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh man, I\u2019m going to blow my knee out right now,\u201d she thought. \u201cBecause I could feel the torque coming through my leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had spent the entire season hurtling toward 70 mph. She was fifth in the Olympics. She was on the World Cup podium.<\/p>\n

Now she was barely moving in comparison, giving back to future of her sport in an off-season ski-racing camp in Mammoth, and she was suffering a major injury.<\/p>\n

She had been slipping a course, skiing in a snow plow, and hit a patch of snow awkwardly.<\/p>\n

She flipped and landed on her back.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy feet were in the air and I could see immediately \u2014 oh, my foot is pointed at the wrong direction,\u201d she said. \u201cInstead of here, it was over here, 90 degrees the wrong way.\u201d<\/p>\n

A landmark season<\/p>\n

At that point, in May 2018, Alice McKennis was still getting better at ski racing. At age 28, she had had one of the best seasons of her career.<\/p>\n

At the downhill in PyeongChang, South Korea, amid the media hoopla of what would be Lindsey Vonn\u2019s final Olympic medal, McKennis quietly notched a big result \u2014 fifth place.<\/p>\n

She finished just 0.55 seconds from an Olympic medal. She\u2019d never before even completed an Olympic race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was an incredible feeling, to have a performance like that in the Olympic downhill and to ski how I wanted to ski,\u201d said McKennis, who lives in Minturn.<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, she took another huge step. She finished third in the World Cup Finals downhill in Are, Sweden, sharing the podium in Vonn\u2019s final victory.<\/p>\n

It was McKennis\u2019 first World Cup top-three in five years.<\/p>\n

And McKennis, long a downhill specialist, began to excel that season in the super-G, which has more turns and requires a bit more finesse.<\/p>\n

She had struggled with injuries for years \u2014 suffering a left tibial plateau fracture in 2011, then shattering her right tibial plateau in 2013.<\/p>\n

In 2013-14, she sat out most of the Olympic season because injury.<\/p>\n

Following those injuries, she had put in enormous effort into rehab \u2014 multiple surgeries, early mornings, countless physical therapy sessions, long hours at the gym.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so gratifying for me to see her succeed because it\u2019s just so much hard work,\u201d said her husband, Pat Duran, a current Ski & Snowboard Club Vail coach, a former University of Colorado ski-racing standout and a former World Cup skicross racer. \u201cYou don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to work. You\u2019re betting that it does for years of rehab. Then to get results like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A crash<\/p>\n

But sometimes the path to success is not a straight line.<\/p>\n

Just two months after reaching the top stratosphere of the sport, she came crashing down while coaching youth skiers at the American Downhiller camp at Mammoth Mountain, California.<\/p>\n

She had suffered a transverse fracture of both her tibia and fibula \u2014 the two long bones in the lower leg.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a total freak accident,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

However, she had seen worse. In 2013, her tibial plateau had shattered into 30 pieces; she needed 11 screws and a metal plate to rebuild it.<\/p>\n

After the May 2018 injury, a press release from the U.S. Ski Team said she\u2019d be back on snow that fall, with McKennis quoted as saying, \u201cThis injury is the least complex of all my previous injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

She ended up missing the entire 2018-19 season.<\/p>\n

\u2019Reason with the risk\u2019<\/p>\n

Ski racing is a dangerous sport, and injuries are a big part of it.<\/p>\n

Just look at McKennis\u2019 teammates on the women\u2019s speed team. Every women\u2019s A-Team member other than Mikaela Shiffrin is coming back from a significant injury.<\/p>\n

In February 2018, Jackie Wiles, a 27-year-old speed specialist from Portland, Oregon, crashed in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen downhill, tearing her ACL, LCL, meniscus, and fracturing her tibia and fibula.<\/p>\n

This March, Laurenne Ross, 30, a speed specialist from Bend, Oregon, crashed during training for the World Championships in Are, tearing her LCL and meniscus. She had reconstructive surgery on her knee in March.<\/p>\n

Breezy Johnson, 23, of Victor, Idaho, also a speed specialist, tore her PCL and MCL on June 13 after catching an edge during giant slalom training at Mammoth.<\/p>\n

And Lindsey Vonn, the all-time winner in women\u2019s World Cup, who was constantly plagued with injuries for the last few years, finally retired this year, saying her body just couldn\u2019t take it anymore.<\/p>\n

Why keep doing it?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou accept that the injuries are part of it and that something will probably inevitably happen,\u201d McKennis said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make a ton of sense as to why continue doing it \u2014 if you know the rest of your life you\u2019re compromising your body in some way. I think at the end of the day, we all love the sport so much and are so passionate about it that you find a way to reason with the risk, I suppose, and accept it for what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just not healing<\/p>\n

McKennis underwent surgery in Mammoth in May, which entailed getting two titanium rods \u2014 one for the tibia and one for the fibula. Doctors were still suggesting that she\u2019d be skiing at some point that winter.<\/p>\n

At six weeks, her physician, Dr. William Sterett, of Vail Summit Orthopaedics and the U.S. Ski Team, saw essentially no bone healing in X-rays. She underwent another surgery in July, this time to remove a screw that was potentially slowing the healing.<\/p>\n

Six weeks later, there was still little healing. She began to develop a searing pain on the inside of her ankle when she walked. Medical imagery revealed that scarring around the fracture was the source of the pain.<\/p>\n

It got to the point where she could barely walk.<\/p>\n

\u201dThe whole time, my leg was just still broken, and that was really one of the hardest things I\u2019ve had to go through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Doctors told her she needed ankle surgery. She\u2019d go home and cry. Then she\u2019d go to the gym push her body to the limit. The rods were effective in stabilizing the bone, allowing her to train relatively hard. But walking was painful. She remembers literally crawling from station to station in the gym at one point.<\/p>\n

Doing work<\/p>\n

Jimmy Pritchard, director of strength and conditioning with Ski & Snowboard Club Vail, guided McKennis through workouts during that time period. He recalls McKennis hobbling around the Minturn Fitness Center with a cane \u2014 but that didn\u2019t stop her from putting in enormous effort daily.<\/p>\n

\u201dI\u2019ve never worked with an athlete in my life that put as much time and effort in as her,\u201d he said \u2014 and he\u2019s worked with a lot of athletes.<\/p>\n

Her husband described her work ethic this way: \u201cIf she did anything more, she\u2019d be in an insane asylum. It\u2019s absolutely crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And her coach, Chip White, said, \u201cShe\u2019s someone who looks in the mirror first and doesn\u2019t point fingers when things go bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKennis grew up on a cattle ranch in New Castle, and started skiing at age 2 at Sunlight near Glenwood Springs. She later raced with Ski Club Vail and Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club.<\/p>\n

As a 20-year-old, she burst onto the World Cup scene with a top-10 finish in just her third start. She competed in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver but skied off course in her only event, the downhill. She was a top-20 downhiller in 2009-10, and top 10 in 2012-13, when she won her first and only World Cup, a downhill in St. Anton, Austria.<\/p>\n

But after she returned from sitting out most of the 2013-14 season due to injury, she struggled to break through.<\/p>\n

A second chance<\/p>\n

By the end of the 2016-17 season, she was ranked 33rd in the downhill, the lowest season-ending ranking of her career. Her spot with the U.S. Ski Team was in danger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had figured after 2017, I\u2019m probably going to have to retire just because the U.S. Ski Team wouldn\u2019t name me again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But surprisingly to her, she was invited to train with the U.S. Ski Team that April. She saw it as a great opportunity \u2014 a chance to turn around the trajectory of her career. But she also felt pressure \u2014 it was a make-it-or-break-it situation.<\/p>\n

White said, going back to McKennis\u2019 previous injuries, he and the other coaches saw a determination in her that made them not want to give up on her.\u2029\u201cI just saw the tenacity in her comeback from (her 2013 injury), that this girl is the real deal, and she is a fighter and not one that\u2019s going to give up,\u201d White said. \u201cThat type of attitude is something you don\u2019t teach. It\u2019s ingrained in someone. When I saw that in her, that\u2019s what made me fight for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKennis found a new focus, intentionally improving her fundamentals, including her start. She realized that her start was giving away three-tenths of a second in every race.<\/p>\n

The effort paid off. McKennis had the fastest start split in the Olympic downhill.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow \u2018bout them apples?!\u201d she wrote in her blog.<\/p>\n

Another fundamental was just making good turns. And she got better at that, too. She finished 2018 with the highest super-G rank of her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it was her mindset \u2014 just her belief in her herself that she could do it, and it changed her skiing,\u201d White said. \u201cInstead of just surviving, she was looking to get better while going faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new low, then a miracle<\/p>\n

Back to the summer of 2018 and the leg that wouldn\u2019t heal \u2014 McKennis went ahead with another surgery to remove another locking screw in August. And then the ankle surgery to remove the scarring around her tendons in September.<\/p>\n

She was hoping for a miracle.<\/p>\n

But the X-ray results were crushing: still not much healing. Her leg was, essentially, still broken.<\/p>\n

She hit a low point. She gave up on skiing that winter. She wondered if she would ever walk normally again \u2014 much less ski.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, if I never ski again, that\u2019s OK,\u201d she said. \u201cI just want to walk, and if I live out my life normally without skiing and ski racing, I\u2019d be OK with that. Because it got to a point where I just don\u2019t know how I would be able to live like this if I couldn\u2019t stand up and walk across the room without pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

She finally decided to undergo an invasive \u201cnail exchange\u201d surgery to try to jump start the healing process. In the surgery, which Sterett performed in Vail in December, the rod was ripped out of the fibula so it could heal on its own. The other rod was ripped out of the tibia, and a thicker rod was inserted in a bid to stimulate healing.<\/p>\n

Six weeks later, the bones were healing, and the ankle pain was gone. McKennis used the word \u201cmiracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, good news \u2014 the surgery seemed to work.<\/p>\n

By April, she was back on snow in Vail. In June, she attended a team camp in Mammoth.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s looking like a real skier again, which is why we\u2019re all excited about her future,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n

She and Duran also got married in May in a ceremony in Moab, Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great wedding, and I definitely had more time to plan for it, which was the silver lining to this whole thing,\u201d McKennis said.<\/p>\n

For the rest of the summer, she\u2019ll be working out with Pritchard in Minturn. She\u2019ll go train with the team in Chile in September.<\/p>\n

A veteran\u2019s wile<\/p>\n

McKennis, now 29, may no longer have that youthful athleticism and recklessness that can translate to speed. But she has years of experience; she knows how to push limits but not go past them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that makes me really comfortable knowing that I don\u2019t have to risk everything, but I have to risk a lot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

White expects McKennis to begin to approach podium potential again this season.<\/p>\n

Duran also said he has high expectations for her this winter. He\u2019s also expecting her to still be the hardest worker out there; to wake up at 3 a.m. if she needs to start preparing then.<\/p>\n

And if even if she wins World Cup races, she\u2019ll probably still keep coaching at camps such as American Downhiller, teaching young skiers how to go fast, her husband said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s as normal as you can be in the ski-racing world; the most down-to-earth person you can be for being that environment,\u201d he said. \u201cShe stayed true to the person she wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

More to give<\/p>\n

For McKennis, as she\u2019s gotten older and battled injuries, she asks herself these questions:<\/p>\n

Is it worth it?<\/p>\n

Do I want to continue doing this?<\/p>\n

But she knows she still has potential. She wants to win World Cups again. She want to go back to the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are things I still want to achieve and I\u2019m really confident I can, so I\u2019m not ready to give up on that,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not ready to stop that dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI still want to pursue it for a few more years and see what I can accomplish. From when I was young, it was always my dream to do this. So, I\u2019m just not ready yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI still think I have a lot to give to the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

estoner@vaildaily.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. Ski Team member Alice McKennis works on her core muscles at the Minturn Fitness Club earlier this month.Chris Dillmann | cdillmann@vaildaily.com EAGLEVAIL \u2014 Alice McKennis could feel her leg twisting, twisting, twisting as she fell toward the snow. \u201cOh man, I\u2019m going to blow my knee out right now,\u201d she thought. \u201cBecause I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 04:29:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}