More drama for oft-injured Vonn (cont.)

Yet Vonn has terrific faith in Saringer and Hager. I saw them together last summer in Austria and they share a deep trust and friendship. As I described it in a story I wrote on Vonn in Sports Illustrated, they are like her big brothers. The vast majority of Vonn's yearlong treatment and training is supervised by professionals outside the U.S. program.

"Once we got to Whistler, Dr. Sterret evaluated Lindsey and he has been involved since then,'' said Thomas Vonn. "Oliver is managing her minute-to-minute care.''

Saringer's care is not exactly what you would call mainstream. `"Oliver has been rubbing all kinds of things on my leg to reduce the inflammation,'' says Lindsey. "He's been wrapping cheese on it, and I know that sounds funny, but it seems to work. He's been rubbing castor oil on it.'' Vonn also said that Red Bull trainers have been using laser treatments to promote healing. Despite Vonn's clear affection for and confidence in what she calls the "Red Bull team,'' official comments come from the U.S. Ski Team medical crew, which leads to hilarious moments like chief medical officer Dr. Jim Moeller being asked about cheese wrapping and saying, stiffly, "It's not something I'm, aware of.''

In any case, the next step will come Thursday morning in downhill training for Sunday's super combined event (one run of downhill with one run of slalom). "That's going to be the real test," says Vonn. "And I really don't know what to expect. Right now I feel like I'm at the point where I can fight through the pain, But we'll see what happens." (Sterrett said, "You can never discount Lindsey and how tough she is.").

One distinct possibility is that Vonn could buy herself a little recovering time by skipping Sunday's super-combined, and look ahead to the downhill on Feb. 17 and the Super-G on Feb. 20. "Obviously my main events are the downhill and Super-G," Vonn told me. "But also the combined. But there's a big difference between skiing downhill and skiing slalom." (Translation: The slalom puts much more pressure on the shins, with constant turning, although the downhill is no picnic, either).

Weather could also play a factor. The mountains at Whistler-Blackcomb resort, where all Alpine racing will take place, were enshrouded for the second half of Wednesday, truncating men's downhill training after 40 racers. "We're assuming there are going to be more delays and postponements,'' said U.S. men's downhiller Marco Sullivan. In 1998, Austrian great Hermann Maier was banged up in a spectacular downhill crash and then won gold medals in Super-G and giant slalom after delays in the mountains outside Nagano, Japan gave him extra recovery time. Vonn could benefit similarly. "Nothing would make me happier than five days straight with pounding blizzards,'' said Thomas. "But do I think Lindsey won't ski any races? No, I think she will ski in the Olympics.''

Vonn had come to Vancouver as the 2010 Games' version of Michael Phelps -- a U.S. star with the potential to win multiple medals over multiple days. (And she's far more telegenic than Phelps). Clearly the script has been changed. Vonn said she went public with her injury because if she was unable to complete downhill training on Thursday, there would be no hiding that something was wrong. "I wanted to tell you guys now," she said at her press conference, "as opposed to you guys watching the first training run and I'm not in it."

It is a public relations strategy that complicates Vonn's quest. Consider if Vonn was a football or hockey player. She -- or her team -- would be in lockdown to prevent the public from learning about her injury. And if word leaked out, it would be acknowledged only that she has a "lower-body" injury. Of course, hockey and football players can attack each other's injured body parts, while skiers cannot.

And in revealing the injury, Vonn has added another layer of drama to her quest. If she wins, she's not only a gold medalist, but a gold medalist who beat long physical odds to even compete. If she loses, or can't race at all, she was torpedoed by fate. Again. Which would be brutally unjust.

And in a sense, she has gone back in time. Her training crash four years ago in Sestriere put the ski racing world on hold, waiting to see if she would race, if she would somehow climb off the training table. And she did. Now the ski world waits again.