Whistler ski cross racer Ashleigh McIvor has torn the anterior cruciate ligaments in her left knee during training for the X Games in Aspen, Colo., and will miss the rest of the season. The good news is the injury at least had the decency to wait a year.
"It's extremely frustrating but I'm thankful that it's not last year's X Games because that was the last event before the Olympics," McIvor, the gold medallist at those 2010 Games, said Thursday on a conference call. "I'm trying to keep it in perspective. Injuries are part of the sport and it's inevitable that we're going to get hurt doing what we do. It could be much worse. "I don't have a head injury. I don't have a spinal injury. It's OK. This will heal and I will be back racing next year.
McIvor tore the ACL in her left knee in 2005. She said she'll have the surgery in a couple of weeks. She figures she'll probably be back training on the bike within three months and hopes to be skiing six months from now.
McIvor, 27, will remain in Aspen for the X Games, watch Sunday's final and then head to Deer Valley, Utah, where she'll be a spectator at the 2011 world freestyle ski championships (ski cross is part of freestyle worlds). They start Sunday and end on Feb. 7. McIvor had hoped to be in Deer Valley defending the world title she won in 2009, in Japan. She still plans to attend the event. Her entire family has made travel plans and intends to be there.
"My whole family has uncancellable trips to worlds," she said. "I guess this way I'll just get to spend more time with them than I would have.
"It's frustrating. I was pretty hungry for some more podium results, particularly here," continued McIvor, who finished second at X Games last season. "I was leading this [X Games] race until half way down the course last year. It's frustrating that I'm not going to have the opportunity to defend my world title but that's how it goes."
The Aspen course is a white knuckler. It ends with a wicked final jump that's so high and intimidating that race officials have actually changed it for the women's race. That, however, wasn't the part of the course that got McIvor on Wednesday.
"The course looks great and I was having a lot of fun running it," McIvor explained. "I got the nerve up to hit the last jump, bigger than any jump I've ever hit in my life. But on the run after that I was following the boys and I guess I kinda caught some-one's draft going off the jump. It was a triple with three rollers and I over-shot it by a lot and came down really hard on the flats, way past the landing. My knee just buckled.
"I just came down so hard from so high up, something had to give."
Head coach Eric Archer was on the course just below the spot where McIvor fell.
"I saw her in the air and then I heard her scream so I knew I'd better get up there," he said. "It wasn't a big crash or anything. It just happened on the landing.
"She over-shot her landing and come down from a high altitude and I think the impact of the landing is what caused the injury."
Neither Archer nor McIvor think the course is too difficult.
"This wasn't even one of the intimidating sections of the course," McIvor said of the spot where she got hurt.
"I was fine on the parts that were scary, that's the fun part of competing at X Games. It's a real challenge mentally to take that first training run but this is one of the jumps that I wasn't even thinking of as scary. I just flew too far."
"It is bigger than everywhere else we go," said Archer. "Once a year the athletes get to put on a show and they look forward to coming here because it is a little more of a rush than the average World Cup course."
McIvor was happy to hear that they'd changed the bottom jump. "It's definitely the biggest jump I've ever hit," she said. "I don't think it's necessary to have a jump like that at the bottom of the track that could potentially see six people going off at the same time.
"I think there were two, maybe three of us who hit it in training. That would really limit the field if 90 per cent of the athletes weren't even going to complete the course." McIvor is the third Canadian 2010 Olympic medallist in the last two weeks to see their season end.
Two weeks ago West Vancouver snowboard cross gold medallist Maelle Ricker injured her hand. On Monday Ottawa speedskater Kristina Groves, a bronze and silver medallist in 2010, ended her season due to a concussion.