Sochi medallists’ comeback trail finished
Rehab from injuries pays off
Marielle Thompson passed the finish line of the ski cross course at Phoenix Snow Park on Monday morning, and she smiled. She smiled wide and she smiled long.
For Thompson, the 25-year-old gold medallist from Sochi, that run, a turn down the Phoenix track, was her first attempt at a serious run since October, when she ruptured both the ACL and MCL ligaments in her right knee in a training accident.
The initial thought was that her season, including the Olympics, was over. But she has rehabbed aggressively, and despite not competing on the World Cup circuit, the ski cross coaches named her to the team. That probably wasn’t such a tough call: if the defending champion thinks she can give it a go, you probably let her try.
But no one knew how the knee would respond under race conditions. Monday morning provided the first evidence.
“I think you guys could probably tell I was stoked,” the Whistler, B.C., skier said. “I couldn’t take the smile off my face, from the bottom, all the way up the lift. It was nice just to get back out there and put down a couple of solid runs.”
She says the knee, at least from the experience of Monday’s two runs down the hill, is not something she thinks about when she’s atwork.
“I think about it sometimes,” she says. “But when I’m skiing I’m full focused into the course, and I’m glad I can ski that way, just skiing how I can and not worrying about extra stuff.”
Thompson isn’t the only member of the Canadian team to have injury problems, although hers are the most recent. Kelsey Serwa, who won the silver medal in Sochi, hurt her knee in a training accident in December 2016. When Alpine Canada announced the following January that she would miss the remainder of that World Cup season, the release included this quote from Serwa, describing what happened when she landed hard after a jump: “The impact took a chunk off my lateral femoral condyle, which basically means there was a divot in the cartilage on a bone in my knee.”
I mean, ouch.
Serwa, the 28-year-old from Kelowna, B.C., said despite missing all that time last season, she feels, “surprisingly well.”