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The gold medal favorite for the women's ski
slopestyle at the Feb. 9-25 Games in South Korea, the
15-year-old injured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her
left knee while training in New Zealand.
At 13, Sildaru became the youngest Winter X Games gold medalist
when she won ski slopestyle in 2016. She followed that up with a
gold and silver medal a year later in Aspen.
Just weeks before her injury Sildaru competed in her first World
Cup event, having previously been too young to compete, and won
the slopestyle competition.
Since her injury, Sildaru has chronicled her recovery on various
social media platforms. Her 62,000 Facebook followers are
treated to photographs and video blogs detailing every stage of
the rehabilitation process.
Despite the crushing disappointment of missing out on
Pyeongchang next month, she is consistently optimistic about her
future.
"Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines," she wrote in
a caption to one of her photos on Instagram.
In another from November, she wrote, "Happiness is a direction,
not a place."
At 15, Sildaru has plenty of time to appear at the Olympics and
try to add to Estonia's seven Winter Games medals, all won in
cross country skiing. She will still be a teenager when Beijing
2022 rolls around.
(Editing by Peter Rutherford)
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