Shortly after the races in Cortina I tweaked my right knee yet again, this time while racing in a Europa Cup GS in France. I was running a deep line and I just felt it tweak in the middle of a turn. Although I continued on for several more gates, I eventually pulled out of the course because of the pain. My knee immediately swelled up and remained swollen for another five days. I flew home, once again, to get an MRI and get checked out by my doctor.

While we suspected a meniscus tear, the only thing that showed up in the imaging was some arthritis on the end of my femur. Not fully understanding what was going on inside my knee, I was directed to take an entire month off snow to allow it time to recover. By the end of the four weeks I felt strong and like my knee was back to normal. I trained two days in Park City prior to heading overseas for my first race back.

There was something about skiing that rubbed my knee the wrong way. After only three days on snow, the pain and swelling was back. Still hoping to salvage my top-25 world ranking, I raced in the Super G in Åre, Sweden anyway. In the middle section of the course, I misjudged my line by overturning on a blind knoll and I ended up missing the next gate after it. I am not the kind of competitor who makes that sort of error; it was obvious to me that my knee had affected my confidence. I opted to skip the GS in Åre the following day because I simply wasn’t healthy enough to handle the demand of racing.

It was clear that I had some sort of irritant causing problems inside my knee. I came to the conclusion, based on my physical therapist and doctor’s recommendations, to get surgery. By this point, the priority had shifted from trying to salvage this competition season, to being prepared for the next one… My knee was too much of an issue to keep skiing through. I felt like I was banging my head against a wall because my body simply wasn’t capable of performing to my potential. After Åre, all I wanted was to be healthy again. I set a surgery date for March 4th.

I stuck around Europe for another week—pumping the anti-inflammatories—in order to ski on next year’s Olympic hill in San Sicario, Italy. Seeing the Olympic venue was a valuable and motivating experience, and thanks to the medication, my knee was feeling significantly better by the end of the week. It’s too bad that my result in the Super G didn’t reflect it, but I couldn’t have asked for a better run to finish my 2005 season with. When I got to the finish, I felt more satisfied with my performance than I have all year. I really felt like I’d nailed it. I was aggressive, executed my line, jumped well, and I didn’t think about my knee once. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have a chance running with bib number-one; especially considering the disappointingly flat hill got a fresh dusting of snow the night before. The track kept getting faster and I watched as my competitors destroyed my time one by one.

One week later, I went in for my surgery in Seattle. My surgeon, Dr. Hormel, found what my MRI had hinted at: I have an arthritic defect on my femoral condial. Basically, I have a pothole in the cartilage on the end of my femur. He poked a few holes in the area as a healing-response treatment in hopes of it sealing over and preventing more cartilage from falling off. He also cleaned out some pieces of cartilage that were floating around and trimmed my frayed meniscus. There’s a possibility that the arthritis will continue to be an issue, but the necessary treatment would require an extensive six-month recovery. The hope is that I had enough cleaned up this time around to at least get me by for a while, most importantly, through the Olympics next February.

I am already looking forward to skiing again at my team’s first training camp in April. It’s disappointing that I won’t be able to defend my GS title at U.S. Nationals this year, but I’ve already reset my focus and motivation towards preparing for next season. This nightmare-of-a-season wasn’t exactly the building year I’d planned on having prior to the Olympics so I definitely have my work cut out for me. With seven full months to get healthy and completely adapt to my new equipment, however, I feel extremely optimistic. Now that I have all of the bad luck and injuries behind me, I am excited for a fresh start!

I will return to Dartmouth College for my “sophomore fall” on March 27th. I’ve been bored out of my mind since the surgery so I can’t wait for the change of pace!