BORMIO, Italy, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Spain's Ana Alonso Rodriguez is going home with two bronze Olympic medals just four months after being hit by a car and tearing her ACL.
The feat is not Alonso Rodriguez's alone, as she won her second medal on Saturday with teammate Oriol Cardona Coll in the inaugural SkiMo mixed relay event, which paired one woman and one man from each participating nation, competingover the course of two SkiMo laps each.
The duo had each already made the podium in their respective sprint events in the sport’s debut on Thursday, Alonso Rodriguez taking the bronze and Cardona Coll the gold.
What makes Alonso Rodriguez's medals even more impressive is her fight to get back to racing after being hit by a car in October while out training on her bicycle.
Some have called the 31-year-old the "Lindsey Vonn of SkiMo" with her choice to not have surgery on her subsequently torn ACL or hurt shoulder in order to stand a winning chance in the Olympics.
It was all worth it though, she said, making history with her sport as she claimed two of the nine Olympic medals the sport has offered to date.
"I made a very risky decision, which was not to have surgery on my knee or shoulder, and many people thought I was crazy, but in the end it wasn't so crazy, and I won as many medals as I thought I could," Alonso Rodriguez said after Saturday's race.
"I feel very proud that I didn't give up and gave it my all until the end and believed in myself so much because it was very difficult," she added, "I think I've managed to find a strength that even I didn't know I had."
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier in Bormio; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
