Lindsey Vonn’s Injury Could Keep Her Out Of Winter Olympics

The infamous SI cover jinx may have hit the Winter Olympics Wednesday morning.

Lindsey Vonn, America’s hottest skiing swimsuit model, revealed on NBC’s Today Show that she suffered a bruised right shin while training last week in Austria. Vonn, who graced the cover of SI’s Olympic Preview issue earlier this month (as seen below), hasn’t skied since the incident and expressed serious doubt that she’d be completely healthy for the Vancouver Olympics, which kick off Friday.

“I’m coming into these Olympics a lot more unsure than I was, um, a few weeks ago,” Vonn said in an interview that aired on NBC this morning.“I at least want people to know what’s going on and if I don’t perform well, why that is,” the two-time reigning overall World Cup champion added. “But I can guarantee you that I’m going to do everything I can to be as ready as I can with this injury and still try to ski well.”

A despondent Vonn used the term “excruciatingly painful” to describe her injury. She said she still planned to ski all five events but raised the possibility of skipping training runs, which are important because they allow downhill skiers to become familiar with the course.

The first women’s Alpine race is the super-combined slalom on Sunday. The first official training run for women is Thursday.

Vonn said a doctor told her the injury would take “a couple of weeks to completely heal” but she has raced in pain before. In the 2006 Turin Games, she competed in races despite suffering a severe back injury during a training run. But she did not medal in those Games.