The saddest story at the Winter Olympics in Milan/Cortina maybe that of Lindsay Von who while seeking her second gold and fourth Olympic medal blew out her ACL while training for the downhill. Although she tried to ski through it, Von crashed and fell, ending her pursuit.
It was tragically not her first encounter with misfortune. As NBC News pointed out this week:
Vonn has had multiple knee injuries throughout her career: tears to her medial collateral and anterior cruciate ligaments at the 2013 World Championships, then a complete ACL tear later that year which forced her to pull out of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and a lateral collateral ligament tear in 2018 that led to her announcing her retirement.
As NBC also noted, women are far more likely to suffer knee injuries and are two to eight more likely to tear their ACLs in comparison to men, citing data from Yale Medicine.
Now, with support from Clara Wu Tsai through her and Joe Tsai’s WuTsai Performance Alliance, there will be a new initiative to research why the disparity. According to the NBC report, prior studies have shown that women have different physiology that might lead to the increased risk. Fluctuating hormone cycles have also been suggested as a potential factor. Wu Tsai of course is familiar with injuries to women athletes as co-owner of the Liberty. (She is the force behind the Liberty’s planned $80 million training center.)
The Tsais and Jane and David Ott, who serve on the USA Track & Field Foundation board. have arranged a $50 million infusion of cash into what’s called the Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute, located in Brighton, Mass.
“We have this Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute (WHSP) that has a clinical component, a research component, a training environment and education all under one roof, so that it’s one very cohesive engine,” Dr. Kate Ackerman, former Team USA rower and co-founder of the institute, told NBC News. “And this is something that’s been a long time coming.”
Despite the exponential growth of female athletes across competitive sports, less than 10% of research has focused on women and their bodies, according to Ackerman. The institute is hoping to focus on the challenges specific to women across age groups, including those who are postpartum and post-menopause, in an effort to prevent injuries and keep athletes playing longer.
“Because there’s so much talk about women athletes, and because there’s so much talk about women’s health, people feel that, ‘Oh, it must be taken care of,’” Ackerman said. “But we’re just not there yet.”
“Through both the Alliance and WHSP, I’m thrilled to continue supporting this important area of research for female athletes — both professional and recreational — around the world,” Wu Tsai said. The Tsais commitment is through the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, where Ackerman has spent the last five years working on scientific advancements for women. Wu Tsai described the research in a statement as “chronically understudied and underfunded.”
The Performance Alliance is one of the Tsais’ more intriguing philanthropic endeavors. Its goal is to “reverse-engineer” health advances by studying humans at their peak — particularly elite athletes. The Tsais, through their Joe and Clara Wu Tsai Foundation, have earmarked $220 million over the next 10 years to fund the alliance.
“After robust dialogues and engagement with biologists, engineers, trainers, clinicians, and athletes,” Wu Tsai said back when the alliance was set up in 2021. “We decided to focus on defining the scientific principles underlying human performance.”