July 30, 2010 (Salt Lake City, Utah) – Injuries are part of all sports. They can, and do happen to just about every athlete, often at the most inopportune times. Even something as benign as wrestling with your dog can result in an injury that takes weeks or months to heal. In Johnny Spillane’s case, it was simply taking an afternoon off to go cliff jumping that has him now firmly ensconced on his in-laws couch in Salt Lake City, recovering from knee surgery to repair a torn ACL.

Spillane, a Nordic Combined silver medal-winner and star of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, was cliff jumping near Lake Placid when he landed awkwardly. The impact with the water tore his ACL, MCL and meniscus, as well as damaging his hamstring. On Tuesday (July 27th) he underwent surgery to have his ACL reconstructed. The surgery went well given the extensive damage to his knee, but prior to going in the doctors were unsure just how badly he’d been hurt.

“Going into the surgery we didn’t really know the extent of the injuries, but essentially the worst thing happened. We thought there might be just a small tear, but the ACL was totally gone,” Spillane said by phone from Salt Lake City. Even with the bad news, he seems optimistic.

“They got everything taken care of that they wanted to, now it’s just going to be a matter of healin’ up.”

As well as being optimistic about his recovery, he’s also confident that this won’t affect his attendance at World Championships in Oslo, Norway in late February. At the moment he hasn’t had a chance to discuss recovery time lines with his doctors, which will come after his knee settles down from the surgery in a few weeks. Eve so, and even though he had been planning on racing a full World Cup calendar leading up to Norway, he says he’s adapted his plans to something that will work.

“I’m not too worried about getting into World Cups right away. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I don’t really need the experience.” The plan is to stay in North America and work on recovery and training well into the winter. It’s more important to get into good shape than it is to get into some competition.”

Spillane will spend a few more days in Salt Lake City before heading back home to Steamboat Springs on Sunday. Given the long road ahead of him, he seems remarkably at ease with everything, likely because he’s no stranger to injury and rehab. As he says, “I’ve been through this type of thing many times, so unfortunately, I know exactly what to do.”