Lindsey Vonn is done for the season after tearing up knee in fall

All it took was a moment. Lindsey Vonn landed hard and tumbled face first with a piercing shriek.

Just like that, her season was done. The star American skier was on the ground with two ligaments in her right knee torn, a bone in her lower leg broken.

The cascading fall down the slope during the super-G at the world championships at Schladming, Austria, on Tuesday knocked out the four-time World Cup champion for the rest of the season.

The U.S. team said in a statement it expects her back for the next World Cup season and the 2014 Sochi Olympics, which start a year from this week.

The harrowing accident came after Vonn was lifted into the air off a jump in the opening race at the championships. As she hit the ground, her right leg gave way and she spun down face first, throwing an arm out to protect herself. She ended up on her back as she smashed through a gate.

Race leader and eventual champion Tina Maze watched with her mouth agape. The concern also was obvious on the face of Vonn’s sister, Laura Kildow, who has been traveling with her this season.

Vonn tore her anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament in her right knee, U.S. ski team medical director Kyle Wilkens said in a statement. The broken bone was described as a “lateral tibial plateau fracture.”

She was airlifted to a hospital in Schladming.

BASEBALL

Nerve injury might end Chris Carpenter’s career

Chris Carpenter, one of the best clutch pitchers in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals, may have thrown his final pitch.

General Manager John Mozeliak and Manager Mike Matheny said that Carpenter almost certainly won’t pitch in 2013 and that his career is probably over after a recurrence of a nerve injury that cost him most of last season. Retirement isn’t official yet.

Carpenter, 37, plans to seek further medical evaluation. But Mozeliak seemed resigned to losing him.

Carpenter is 144-94 with a 3.76 earned-run average in a career that began in Toronto in 1997. He spent six seasons with the Blue Jays and nine in St. Louis. He won the 2005 NL Cy Young Award, going 21-5 with a 2.83 ERA, and was second in 2009 after going 17-4 with a 2.24 ERA.

More telling are his postseason results, including a 10-4 record and 3.00 ERA in 18 starts.

Third baseman Alberto Callaspo passed his physical this week, and his two-year, $8.975-million deal with the Angels was made official Tuesday. Callaspo, a solid defender who hit .252 with 10 home runs and 53 runs batted in last season, will make $4.1 million in 2013 and $4.875 million in 2014.

— Mike DiGiovanna

ETC.

Superdome officials had feared a power outage

Concerned the Superdome might not be able to handle the energy needed for its first Super Bowl since Hurricane Katrina, officials spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on upgrades to decayed utility lines in New Orleans, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

Documents obtained Monday through a records request by the AP show that Superdome officials worried months ago about losing power during the NFL championship.

Tests on the electrical feeders that connect incoming power from utility lines to the stadium showed decay and “a chance of failure,” state officials warned in a memo dated Oct. 15. The documents, obtained by the AP through a records request, also show that Entergy expressed concern about the reliability of the service before the Super Bowl.

The improvements apparently weren’t enough, however, to prevent a 34-minute power outage during the third quarter of the game between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.

Two days later, officials still had not pinpointed the cause of the outage. The Superdome’s management company, SMG, and the utility that supplies the stadium, Entergy New Orleans, said Tuesday that they would hire outside experts to investigate.

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Rafael Nadal won his first match Tuesday after being away for more than seven months nursing a sore knee.

The former No. 1-ranked Nadal partnered with Juan Monaco to defeat the Czech pair of Frantisek Cermak and Lukas Dlouhy, 6-3, 6-2, in the VTR clay-court tournament at Vina del Mar, Chile. Nadal opens in singles on Wednesday against Argentine Federico Delbonis.

Nadal, whose left knee problem has lingered despite ongoing therapy, had not played since June 28, when he lost in the second round of Wimbledon by qualifier Lukas Rosol.

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The Sparks signed free agent guard Lindsey Harding to a multiyear contract, the team said. The 5-foot-8 guard, a six-year WNBA veteran, has a career average of 11.2 points, 4.2 assists and 3.3 rebounds. She played for the Atlanta Dream last season, where she averaged 12.3 points and 4.5 assists.

— Melissa Rohlin

Old Dominion fired men’s basketball coach Blaine Taylor. Taylor has the most wins in school history, compiling 239 wins and 144 losses in 12 years. But his team has struggled this season with a 2-20 record. Associate head coach Jim Corrigan will serve as the interim coach.