San Francisco Frontiers - Expectation, then stunned silence as Vonn crashes out of Olympics

Instead they were left in stunned silence watching pictures on the big screen of the American skier's stricken body.

Vonn, the 41-year-old nicknamed the "Speed Queen", was attempting to defy not only age but also a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in her bid to win the downhill gold medal 16 years after her triumph in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

At 11:59 am, under sunny skies, wearing the number 13 bib, Vonn pushed out of the gate to cries of "Go girl" from her US teammates.

But her dream lasted only 12 seconds before she lost her balance and, upon landing her jump, calamitously crashed onto the slope a second later, her skis uncomfortably perpendicular to the course.

Although the crowd could not see Vonn from the bottom of the piste, the images on the big screens were sickening enough.

Vonn was lying on her back, grimacing, her knees bent. Her cries of anguish could be heard on the TV coverage.

Long minutes passed, as spectators and shocked members of the Vonn family fixed their gaze on the screens, while the medical teams on the course wrapped her in a blanket and then strapped her onto a stretcher.

For 15 minutes Vonn lay prone on the snow before the whirr of helicopter blades came and she was winched into the air, with a member of the medical personnel accompanying her.

USA team staff and Snoop Dogg, the rapper who is working for US TV network NBC at these Games, were among the shocked spectators.

Before Vonn's crash, her US teammate Breezy Johnson had set a scorching time to seize the lead. Seated in the traditional leader's chair, she too looked shaken by the crash as the TV cameras panned onto her.

In her absence the skiers who still had to decend the mountain tried to regain their composure.

And when Johnson was confirmed as winner, the sad fact was that Vonn -- the veteran who so many of the other skiers look up to -- was far away.

K.Torres--SFF