Lindsey Vonn's injury robs Sochi Winter Games of its star attraction
The US skier is one of the most photogenic and marketable athletes in the world and her injury leaves a gaping hole in marquee event
Lindsey Vonn's withdrawal from next month's Winter Olympics has deprived the Sochi Games of arguably the most famous face in the blue riband event of Alpine skiing.
The sport's celebrities do not come much bigger than Vonn, the Olympic downhill champion and shining star of commercials across the United States who just happens to be dating world number one golfer Tiger Woods.
Her decision to pull out with a knee injury has left a gaping hole in the schedule and the four-times overall World Cup winner said she was "devastated" to miss out on the chance of winning a medal in her fourth Games.
I've always been someone that has fallen many times, but I've always picked myself back up and this is just one of those instances
One of the most marketable and photogenic of winter athletes, with her clean-cut blonde looks smiling out of multiple glossy magazines, Vonn was desperate to compete in Sochi but recently denied being under pressure from sponsors to take her place in the starting hut.
Vonn, 29, is the only active skier with more than 50 World Cup wins - she is three off Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell's record of 62 - but has endured a nightmare year on the slopes.
After sealing her sixth successive World Cup downhill title, a record for either sex, the Minnesota-born skier crashed at the world championships last February and tore her ACL in her right knee and medial collateral ligament. She aggravated the injury in training at Copper Mountain, Colorado, in November.
An initial return to World Cup competition in Lake Louise in December looked promising, with a fifth place in a Super-G, but the knee let Vonn (pictured) down in Val d'Isere just before Christmas.
"On downhill training runs in Val d'Isere and Lake Louise it held up fine, but then on race day in Val d'Isere it didn't," she said.