The Women's Side of Sport

I am angry.

Heartbroken.

Exhausted.

Lindsey Vonn has torn her ACL again — right before an Olympic Games. Once again, the clock resets on her body, her training, her career, and her possibilities. And while the world marvels at her grit, we should also be asking a harder question:

Why are we still allowing this to happen to women at such disproportionate rates?

This isn’t just bad luck. It’s a long-standing, well-documented problem in sport and sport science.

Women Tear ACLs at Much Higher Rates Than Men

Female athletes are two to eight times more likely to sustain an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury than male athletes competing in comparable sports (Hewett, Myer, & Ford, 2006; Prodromos et al., 2007). We know this, and we have known this – since 2006, apparently. That was twenty years ago…

Large epidemiological studies have shown consistent patterns of higher ACL injury incidence among women in sports that involve cutting, pivoting, and jumping — including soccer, basketball, and alpine skiing (Arendt & Dick, 1995). Crazy – that study is from 1995, and still holds true. Thirty years…

Additionally, approximately 70% of ACL injuries in women occur through non-contact mechanisms, meaning they happen during routine athletic movements rather than collisions (Renstrom et al., 2008). These injuries often occur during landings, deceleration, or changes of direction — fundamental skills in nearly every sport.

This means female athletes are not simply “unlucky.”

They are operating inside a risk environment that we still, for some reason, do not fully understand — and have not invested enough time, money, or resources to change.

This Isn’t About Individual Toughness — It’s a Systemic Blind Spot

Research has identified multiple contributors to ACL injury risk in female athletes, including neuromuscular control, landing biomechanics, strength imbalances, and hormonal influences (Hewett, Myer, & Ford, 2006).

Yet despite decades of awareness, much of sports medicine research has historically relied on male subjects, with findings later generalized to women. As a result, many training programs, screening tools, and rehabilitation protocols are still built on male-based data rather than being designed specifically for female physiology.

“Different” should not mean “ignored.”

It should mean prioritized. And now, with the women’s sports boom, we know it’s worthwhile to invest monetarily in women’s sports. So where is the investment in keeping our athletes healthy?

Stop Romanticizing the Struggle

When a woman tears her ACL, we rush to praise her resilience.

“She’s a warrior.”

“She’ll come back stronger.”

“She’s built different.”

But admiration can become a distraction.

Because toughness is not a prevention strategy.

Lindsey Vonn does not need to prove she is mentally strong.

She has already done that for two decades.

What she — and all women athletes — deserve is a system that reduces the likelihood they will need to display extraordinary resilience in the first place.

I have to add that this is not unique to women athletes. This happens to all women. It’s a trope for all the women in our society who never have enough resources. Who never get the time off, investment, or care that they need and deserve. You see this in motherhood all the time (more on the mental load of being a woman and invisible pressures of womanhood soon – it’s already in my drafts). You see it in the workplace, too. Working women who are competent receive more work – not less. I digress.

Supporting women – especially our athletes – shouldn’t be replaced by remarking at how well they handle adversity. We need to throw less adversity at them. “You carry it so well!” Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some of those things out of her arms.

Prevention Works — When We Choose to Use It

The tragedy is that we already know ACL injuries are partially preventable.

Neuromuscular training programs that include strength training, plyometrics, balance work, and proper landing mechanics have been shown to reduce ACL injury risk in female athletes by up to 50–67% (Hewett, Myer, & Ford, 2006; Sugimoto et al., 2012).

These programs are not experimental.

They are evidence-based.

Yet they are still not universally implemented in youth, high school, club, collegiate, and professional sports. And these are the types of programs that when implemented earlier in life, result in improves motor patterns and thus the prevention of more injuries.

Girls are not consistently given access to the very tools proven to help protect their knees.

That is a choice.

The Cost of Inaction

ACL injuries often require surgery, 9–12 months of rehabilitation, and carry an increased risk of reinjury and early osteoarthritis later in life (Myer, Ford, & Hewett, 2004).

For many athletes, an ACL tear is not just a season lost.

It’s confidence lost.

Scholarships jeopardized.

Careers shortened.

Dreams permanently altered.

Longterm health impacts.

When we talk about why girls drop out of sports, why fewer women reach elite levels, and why longevity remains rare — we must talk about injury.

They are inseparable.

Lindsey Vonn Deserves Better. So Do All Women Athletes.

I am devastated for Lindsey.

I am rooting for Lindsey.

And I am tired of a system that treats repeated knee trauma in women as normal.

Women athletes do not need to be superheroes.

They do not need to be tougher.

They do not need to accept higher risk as the price of participation.

They need a sports culture that finally decides their bodies are worth understanding.

If we can map the human genome and land rovers on Mars, we can figure out how to better protect women’s knees.

We simply have to care enough to try. To invest in research.

At The Women’s Side of Sport, we believe protecting girls and women in sport starts long before college, long before elite levels, long before catastrophic injury. It starts with educating coaches. With evidence-based training and teaching. It starts with building environments where female athletes are seen, studied, and supported.

Advocacy isn’t separate from coaching.

It is coaching.

If we truly care about girls staying in, loving, and thriving in sport, we must care about keeping them healthy.

Lindsey Vonn deserves better.

So does every girl stepping onto a field, court, slope, or gym floor today. Tomorrow.

Let’s stop asking women to be superheroes.

Let’s start building a system that finally treats them like humans worth protecting.

References (APA 7th Edition)

Arendt, E. A., & Dick, R. (1995). Knee injury patterns among men and women in collegiate basketball and soccer. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 23(6), 694–701. https://doi.org/10.1177/036354659502300611

Hewett, T. E., Myer, G. D., & Ford, K. R. (2006). Anterior cruciate ligament injuries in female athletes: Part 1, mechanisms and risk factors. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 34(2), 299–311. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546505284183

Hewett, T. E., Myer, G. D., & Ford, K. R. (2006). Anterior cruciate ligament injuries in female athletes: Part 2, a meta-analysis of neuromuscular interventions aimed at injury prevention. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 34(3), 490–498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546505282619

Myer, G. D., Ford, K. R., & Hewett, T. E. (2004). Rationale and clinical techniques for anterior cruciate ligament injury prevention among female athletes. Journal of Athletic Training, 39(4), 352–364. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534508/

Prodromos, C. C., Han, Y., Rogowski, J., Joyce, B., & Shi, K. (2007). A meta-analysis of the incidence of anterior cruciate ligament tears as a function of gender, sport, and a knee injury–reduction regimen. Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic & Related Surgery, 23(12), 1320–1325. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2007.07.003

Sugimoto, D., Myer, G. D., McKeon, J. M., & Hewett, T. E. (2012). Evaluation of the effectiveness of neuromuscular training to reduce ACL injury in female athletes: A critical review. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 46(14), 979–988. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2011-090895

Renstrom, P., Ljungqvist, A., Arendt, E., Beynnon, B., Fukubayashi, T., Garrett, W., … Engebretsen, L. (2008). Non-contact ACL injuries in female athletes: An International Olympic Committee current concepts statement. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 42(6), 394–412. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.2008.048934