Ciccone rehabbing MCL tear of right knee

Alpine racer Caitlin Ciccone got some good news recently. It wasn’t being officially named to the U.S. B team for the 2007-08 season on June 18. It was hearing the letter “M” instead of “A” at a recent doctor’s visit.

 
ALPINE RACER Caitlin Ciccone got some good news recently. It wasn’t being officially named to the U.S. B team for the 2007-08 season on June 18. It was hearing the letter “M” instead of “A” at a recent doctor’s visit.
    Ciccone, 22, suffered a serious tear to her right knee while training at Mammoth Mountain, California, with the national team in May.
    “I didn’t know for a while. I had to drive back from Mammoth [to Park City] so I didn’t see a doctor for three or four days,” Ciccone said. “I thought I might have torn my ACL, so I was psyched to find out that it was my MCL.”
    A medial collateral ligament tear is often much milder than a tear of the anterior cruciate ligament. The four major stabilizing ligaments of the knee are the MCL, ACL, PCL (posterior cruciate) and LCL (lateral collateral).
    Ciccone said she suffered a Grade-2 tear of the MCL, with Grade 3 being the most severe.
    “It was a pretty bad tear, but I’ve been doing a lot of therapy, rehab, working out a bunch,” she said. “I actually saw a doctor today and now I’m back to doing everything. … It was basically a six-week recovery.
    “It should be fine. It feels back to normal. I have injured it before.”
    Ciccone, who nabbed three top-10 finishes at U.S. nationals at Alyeska, Alaska, including silver in GS, said, “I was skiing through a mogul field at the top of the hill, doing GS turns, going pretty fast, and I just caught my ski and fell forward. The ski twisted all the way around me as far as it could.”
    Ciccone won’t ski at a national team camp at Hood, but is expected to resume on-snow training at the U.S. women’s camp in Chile later this summer. Ciccone ski on Völkl skis but has switched boots from Lange to Tecnica. “I was really fast on them, so I’m pretty excited,” she said. “It’s something new.”
    Ciccone, anticipating a visit from her New Hampshire family to Park City, is staying active running and biking, and she plans to visit her brother Cam in Jackson, Wyoming, in July before the serious preseason focus kicks in.