Certain types of sports, including some of the alpine ones, are about pushing things to their absolute limits and accepting that staying the right side of the edge of those limits is not a precise science and there may be consequences. Vonn more than most would be aware of the potential consequences. On another day, she doesn't clip that gate and the knee holds up and she medals, or maybe she crashes further down, or maybe she gets fifth or something. The only thing that was certain was that having got to the gate she was going to ski as close to the edge as possible like she has her entire career. If that's the last thing she does as a professional skier (seems likely but then no one had her down as coming back in the first place) it lacks the fairy tale ending but I suspect that was never the point for her. It was simply about seeing how far she could push things and what was possible, to explore what she was capable of. That it would end in agony on the side of a hill rather than on the podium was a risk most of us would be unwilling to take but the one thing it was never going to be for her was a round of applause simply for getting there and taking part.
