Downhill superstar Štuhec returns to World Cup after severe knee injury
Ljubljana, 17 December - Slovenia's best skier, the downhill specialist Ilka Štuhec, returned to the World Cup in the 2018/2019 season after missing out the entire last season and the Winter Olympics due to a severe knee injury.
Maribor
Skier Ilka Štuhec in physical therapy as she is recovering from knee surgery.
Photo: Anže Malovrh/STA
A year and eight months after her last appearance in the World Cup, the 28-year-old said she had more to show after going through a gruelling rehab on the left knee, required after she crashed and tore the anterior cruciate ligament during training in October 2017.
While the reigning world champion in downhill is not putting any pressure on herself but says she will give her best in every race of the new season, Slovenians hope she will return to her former glory and return to the elite competition in Alpine skiing. In the first downhill of the season in Lake Louise, she finished sixth.
The Maribor native had 13 podium finishes and seven wins in the 2016/17 season to win small crystal globes for downhill and Alpine combined, and won gold in downhill at the 2017 World Ski Championships.
The skier says that she never had concrete goals in the World Cup. "The goals will be as usual, full effort in every race, and we will see what happens. Each race will be equally important. Time is the biggest opponent and biggest competition anyway."
Apart from the World Cup, Štuhec will also be eyeing the world championships in Sweden's Are in February 2019, where she will be defending the downhill gold. But she says she will be "attacking several things, not only one".