BORMIO, Italy, Feb 16 (Reuters) - When AJ Ginnis stood at the start gate of the Olympic slalom race on Monday, he knew it would be a bittersweet moment ahead of a run that would mark both his Games debut and the end of his career.
The 31-year-old Greek, who won a slalom silver at the 2023 World Championships in Courchevel, France, has failed to get back to peak fitness following his latest injury.
Ginnis had previously undergone 10 surgeries and come back to competitive racing but the day before his Olympic race, Ginnis said it all came "crashing down" in training when he knew he would not be able to compete at the highest level again.
"I won't be attacking the gates one last time," he wrote on Instagram on Sunday. "Instead, I have been given the opportunity to leave the start gate and slide down and finish my career on my terms. And for that, I am deeply grateful."
Ginnis underwent what he thought would be straightforward surgery in November but when a screw was taken out he found that a nerve had been damaged.
"We tried kind of one last Hail Mary of a steroid injection (on Sunday), hoping that would calm things down. We also numbed the leg to see if I could compete with the numbed leg. And it still didn't work."
After his farewell run on the Olympic course, his ankle was hurting just standing in ski boots, "I'm really looking forward to taking these off," he said. "Physically we did everything in our power. We had injections, therapies, we did everything to try to get it there. It didn't work. And that's the reality."
Ginnis, who used to ski for the U.S., relished the last moments of his career on the biggest stage of all.
"Being able to end it as not winning a medal, but being able to kick out of the gate and to become an Olympian in my career, something I've never done before, is something magical," he told reporters.
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier in Bormio, editing by Ed Osmond)
