Many American sports fans woke up early Sunday morning hoping to see United States skiier Lindsey Vonn, 41, pull off the improbable — she was going to attempt the alpine skiing women's downhill medal race on a torn left ACL.
"I don’t need to ski, but I love to ski," Vonn told a critic on social media the day before the race in Cortina, Italy. "I came all this way for one final Olympics and I’m going to go and do my best, ACL or no. It’s as simple as that."
Vonn did her best, but it resulted in a crash after she lost control over the opening traverse. The race was stopped so she could receive medical attention on the snow for several minutes until she was flown off the mountain by helicopter.
Denis Balibouse/Reuters via Imagn Images
The whole time, the cameras and microphones from the Olympic broadcast feed were trained on Vonn. Her screams were audible for several minutes while she received attention after the devastating crash and the crowd went silent.
Viewers around the world were upset at the decision to project Vonn's pain on their screens instead of at least cutting the audio.
"Whoever is choosing the images to show at Winter Olympics should hang their head in shame," said a post on X. "Playing Vonn’s horrific crash on repeat, allowing us to hear her sob in pain is unforgivable."
"I don't know why they need to keep replay that crashes of Lindsey Vonn, I think we don't need to watch and hear it over and over again, It's heartbreaking," said another.
"Can't believe they didn't cut the sound after Vonn crashed," an X user wrote in disbelief. "You can hear her yelling in pain."
"When any athlete is injured, at @milanocortina26 or elsewhere, with Lindsey Vonn crashing out, no one wants to hear participants screaming in agony," another post said. "TV pool should take microphones around the accident site off the feed."
It was a moment that showed the difficult decisions that exist in sports broadcasting. In the NFL and college football, replays of extreme injuries are occasionally not shown to shield the audience at home.
More often than not, the broadcasters show horrific injuries and play the sound after injuries like Vonn's because it is their journalistic duty to tell the full story to the audience at home, even if it is uncomfortable to watch.
It is not clear in this case who made the decision to leave Vonn's audio open and show replays, as the Olympics is often distributed to worldwide carriers, like NBC in the United States, through one master world feed.
Beyond how hard it was for fans to watch, Vonn's crash will likely end her storied skiing career, which could have been even more historic if not for her unfortunate injuries.
Vonn has won every major title in the sport, including three Olympics medals (one gold) and the second-most World Cup wins (84) of any American woman in history.