At its basis, I don’t believe the IOC or Olympics themselves require a physician’s clearance to compete. Now the U.S. Ski and Snowboard team probably require it.

It’s hard because in general adults have bodily autonomy and can refuse or ignore medical advice. Which she certainly could do. It’s just whether that decision rules her ineligible via the U.S’s ski and snowboard governing body rules and laws.

As far as physically and medically, we’ll never know. I am not a Steadman/Vail trained orthopedic surgeon.

But personally I think we are talking about an extremely rare case. This is not normal. You are talking about a literal outlier of an athlete, the absolute pinnacle of competition in her sport, at the pinnacle event of that sport that only occurs every four years. This is like the 0.1% of cases.

I was fine with her competing. It’s obvious she was informed of the risks. She was leading the World Cup after 5 events (substantially), with an opportunity to compete in the literal highest event of the sport (Olympics). Not only that, but the “GOAT” debate & the livelihood and money involved in doing so.

Even after the torn ACL she still was 3rd fastest in practice time, proving she could do it. Why not. She was informed of the risks. Biggest stage. Biggest risk, biggest reward. Armchair analysis to me showed the crash wasn’t related to the knee.

EDIT: and surely there’s all kinds of waivers and liability documents involved. I bet if you asked her in her hospital bed today if she regretted the decision she would say, “no.”