World downhill silver medalist Nina Ortlieb of Austria broke before her right tibia and fibula in a fall before Friday’s World Cup super-G race in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
“Can’t describe how it feels to be so close towards your dreams but suddenly so far away!” was posted on Ortlieb’s social media the next day. “I’ll be out for the season but will keep on fighting.”
Ortlieb, 27, was scheduled to make her season debut on Friday in the campaign’s first speed race. She was fastest in downhill training Thursday.
Last February, Ortlieb finished four hundredths behind Swiss Jasmine Flury in the world championships downhill to earn her first senior world medal.
Before that, she went nearly two years between World Cup races after blowing out her right knee in a January 2021 crash, missing the 2022 Olympics before returning in December 2022. Ortlieb has undergone at least 19 surgeries in her life, according to the International Ski Federation.
Her father, Patrick, won the 1992 Olympic downhill.
Italian Sofia Goggia won Friday’s super-G, the first speed race of the season, by 95 hundredths over Austrian Cornelia Hütter. American Mikaela Shiffrin was fourth.
St. Moritz is scheduled to hold a downhill on Saturday and another super-G on Sunday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
