Lara Gut-Behrami to Miss 2026 Olympics After Knee Injury
Lara Gut-Behrami, the Swiss alpine skiing star and Olympic super-G champion, will miss the entire 2025-26 World Cup season and the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy after suffering a severe knee injury in a training crash last Thursday in Copper Mountain, Colorado.
The 34-year-old skier from Ticino ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, tore her medial collateral ligament and damaged her meniscus in her left knee during a super-G training run. She returned to Switzerland on Sunday and underwent further examinations, with confirmation of the injuries announced Wednesday evening. Gut-Behrami is scheduled for surgery next week at Hôpital de La Tour in Meyrin, near Geneva, under the care of her longtime physician Olivier Siegrist and surgeon Julien Billières.
"I had imagined the next few months very differently and was really looking forward to the rest of the ski season," Gut-Behrami said in a statement. She added a note of perspective amid recent tragedies in the sport, including fatal training accidents involving young athletes such as Italy's Matteo Franzoso and Matilde Lorenz over the past 18 months. "We have recently experienced dramatic events in our sport, fatal accidents...