Ski Racer Nina O’Brien’s Crazy Fast Comeback From an Olympic Crash

Before she might take into consideration strolling usually, she needed to apply utilizing the small muscle tissue in her calf to rotate her foot as soon as once more. The concept of pointing her foot and jamming it right into a ski boot — a depressing expertise for leisure skiers who put on comparatively delicate and versatile boots however a complete different degree of terrible for elite ski racers — appeared preposterous.

She returned to Dartmouth, the place she attends school within the low season. She limped round campus, went to bodily remedy practically day-after-day and tried to comply with the seven-and-a-half-month “return to snow” timeline that the coaches and physiotherapists with the U.S. ski staff had mapped out. First she needed to stroll with out ache, then jog, then bounce, and on and on, assembly sure standards at every step earlier than taking the following one.

O’Brien tried to view the timeline as a sequence of tough targets and never deadlines. A journey extra necessary than the vacation spot.

“She’s always been tough, and can handle more pain than the normal person, even the normal skier,” stated Magnus Andersson, the pinnacle technical coach for the U.S. ladies’s ski staff. That made it extra very important for him and his colleagues to ensure she rested.

“She won’t rest if she has the choice,” he stated.

In mid-September, it was time.

She and Andersson traveled to an indoor ski complicated in Belgium with the gentlest of slopes, the place she didn’t have to fret about sudden slick or delicate patches of snow and a technician was just some steps away to make tools changes. Within a number of runs, she felt like she was snowboarding once more.

“I didn’t cry,” she stated. “I just felt stupidly giddy.”

Within a number of days, O’Brien was linking fast turns once more. By the top of the week, Andersson thought she was snowboarding higher than she had earlier than the crash. In October, she traveled to Austria to rejoin her teammates. Before lengthy, she was chasing velocity once more, identical to they have been. She would have raced on the season-opening competitors in Sölden, Austria, final month, nevertheless it was canceled.