COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colorado – The U.S. women’s ski team will be without one of its top medal contenders at the Milano Cortina Olympics.
‘It’s me, I’m what’s broken RIP acl, see you all next year ’ Macuga said in a post on Instagram.
Macuga’s injury put a damper on the World Cup, which offers the rare opportunity for U.S. skiers to compete on home snow.
‘We’re obviously very sad,’ said Keely Cashman, who is part of the speed team with Macuga. ‘This sport is incredibly brutal and there’s a lot of girls that gotten hurt early on, and it’s a terrible thing. That being said, Lauren is the most positive person I’ve ever met in my entire life. She’s already cracking jokes. She’s also, I would say, one of the hardest working people I know. So I have no doubt that she’ll be back.’
Mikaela Shiffrin agreed.
‘She’s such a hard worker and she’s so positive and she has such a great instinct for just how to keep pushing forward,’ Shiffrin said. ‘Everybody navigates injuries very individually. So mostly it’s just to say we support you through it all and everything you’ve been doing is right. You’ve been doing it all right. So just be patient with yourself and keep going.’
Macuga, 23, emerged as the U.S. team’s brightest young star last season. She got her first World Cup win, in the super-G at St. Anton, and was second in a downhill at Kvitfjell, Norway. She also medaled in her very first world championships, winning bronze in the super-G.
She finished last season as the top American in both downhill (fourth) and super-G (sixth), and was 17th in the overall World Cup rankings. She compiled enough points to earn starts in other disciplines, and Saturday was to be her second career GS start.
‘That moment I was like, `Oh my gosh, I did that.’ It’s this one step in this immense dream and I just achieved that,’ Macuga said last month of winning in St. Anton. ‘And then it’s amazing now to be like, no, that wasn’t the step. I want to achieve so much more.
‘There’s so many branches to this dream and it just keeps growing as I keep going along, and it just motivates me more.’
Macuga also was beginning to command the spotlight off the slopes, and figured to be a big part of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Games. She is bubbly and goofy, easily identifiable with her collection of bucket hats and American flag shirts that she wears after races.
Her appeal is broadened by her family, with her two sisters also vying to make the Olympic team. Older sister Sam is a ski jumper and younger sister Alli is a moguls skier, and they have dubbed their family ‘Chaos Cougs’ for the schedules that have them crisscrossing the globe for much of the year and require their mother to track them on a spreadsheet.
‘For the longest time, it’s been the dream for all of us to be there,’ Lauren Macuga said. ‘We all build off of each other. We all push each other and it’s in the best way because we’ve dreamt about it. It’s been our dream; not my dream for the three of us to have been there, it’s our dream. So you’re like, `Oh, I got to do my part to try and make this happen.”
Disappointing as Macuga’s injury is, the Americans can absorb it better than in years past. This will be the strongest team the U.S. women have had at the Olympics in several years, on both the speed and tech sides, with multiple medal contenders in each race.
There is Shiffrin, of course, who has more World Cup wins (103) than any other skier, male or female and is a two-time Olympic champion. Breezy Johnson is the reigning world champion in downhill while Paula Moltzan has been a consistent podium threat in giant slalom and slalom.
There’s also Lindsey Vonn, who came out of retirement last year after having a partial knee replacement. Vonn finished the season by winning the silver medal in the super-G at the World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Still, Macuga’s injury leaves a hole on the team.
‘She is such an unbelievably hard worker and such a light on our team, so we’ll certainly miss her,’ said Tricia Mangan, another member of the speed team. ‘But we’re already excited for her to come back.’