A Leg Fracture Sidelines Skier McKinney

World Cup skier Tamara McKinney, America’s best hope for an Alpine medal in the 1988 Winter Olympics, will be sidelined for about six weeks with a hairline fracture of her lower left leg.

McKinney suffered the injury during a slalom training session Monday at Copper Mountain, Colo., where the U.S. Ski Team is training, but the severity wasn’t immediately known.

Team trainer Chris Tucker estimated that McKinney will miss about 10 World Cup races but said that she should return well before the Games Feb. 13-28 at Calgary, Canada.

McKinney, the only American woman to win a World Cup overall title, has said this would be her last season of competitive racing.

McKinney, a Lexington, Ky., native who maintains a seasonal home at Olympic Valley, Calif., won the 1983 World Cup overall title. She won giant slalom titles in 1981 and 1983, and the slalom title in 1984.

But McKinney has never won an Olympic medal and has managed only a pair of combined bronze medals in the 1985 and 1987 World Championships. U.S. skiers won five medals in the 1984 Games at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, but McKinney, arguably the best American skier at the time, could do no better than fourth place in the giant slalom.