Olympic downhill champion out for the season
The ski season is over before it even begins for Olympic downhill champion Didier Défago who did major damage to a knee while training, doctors have confirmed.
The 32-year-old Swiss alpine skier took a bad fall earlier this week during in a Super-G practice run on a glacier over Zermatt and had to be flown by helicopter to a nearby hospital.
Hans Spring, head doctor of Swiss Ski men’s alpine team, said Défago had seriously damaged his anterior cruciate ligament as well as an interior ligament. A team surgeon was scheduled to operate on the athlete in Geneva on Friday.
“According to the current diagnosis Didier Défago is expected to be out for the whole season,” Spring said in a statement.
Défago crashed about this same time last year, also in Zermatt. He hurt his thumb and missed the first race of the season but recovered in time to win the Olympic downhill event in Vancouver.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.