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It was in Slovenia in mid-October that Sarah Hendrickson stepped into her skis, tried to forget about most of the past 18 months and let go. She stood off the bar, bent her knees and stared down at the ski jump. It remains, she said, the scariest thing she's ever done.
Hendrickson's mind raced. The last time she left the top of a hill, she blew out her knee upon landing — an injury that kept the one-time face of women's ski jumping sidelined for 15 months. For those few seconds in the air, Hendrickson tried to focus on technique, on getting this first jump — the one she was terrified of for over a year — out of the way.
"Honestly, I thought that I would land and my knee would explode," she said. "I had 20 professionals look at my knee, and had them tell me over and over, 'It's OK.' And I'm not doubting them, I just have to hear them so many times. I still like hearing it."
The 22-year-old Park City jumper landed, knee intact — and still strong after rehabbing extensively for well over a year following yet another surgical repair on the right knee that has been an issue since before her Olympic debut in Sochi, Russia, nearly three years ago.
The jump in Slovenia might have been the first landing, but it also was the last step in a lengthy recovery process. Hendrickson returned to World Cup competition in Lillehammer, Norway, two weeks ago. Her first two results: 11th and eighth place overall. Last weekend in Russia, she finished 12th and 10th.
The road back has been as taxing mentally as anything. Eight months into rehab, she still had residual pain in her knee that drove her up the wall. She'd put in solid hours of strength workouts, plus yoga and pilates, but still dealt with lingering pain. It was there, in those moments, she grew more worried.
A sliver of doubt would creep into her conscience from time to time. About "20 percent" of her thought she'd never jump again. But she never voiced that to anyone. If spoken about, Hendrickson was afraid that it would become a self-fufilling prophecy.
"It would've engulfed my whole mental capacity," she said. "It was pretty surreal to jump again. I don't even know how to explain it. The fear of failure, because everybody just expects you to be what you were."
What she was: A teenage phenom. One of the faces of an equal rights movement that pushed the International Olympic Committee to finally include women's ski jumping into the Olympic Winter Games after years of resistance. Hendrickson already has 13 World Cup gold medals to her name, an overall World Cup season crown and the 2013 World Championship.
Since then it has been a series of surgeries and setbacks. A medal favorite entering Sochi, Hendrickson suffered a brutal crash in Germany months before the Olympics. She needed reconstructive ACL, MCL and meniscus surgery, but despite a late push, she knew entering Sochi she couldn't contend for a gold. She changed her entire perspective going in, to simply soak it in, to revel in the moment she and her fellow female jumpers help achieve.
Sochi was, Hendrickson said, "screwy" for her. And the same could be said for ensuing years, which her string of bad luck continued. The awkward training landing last summer eventually resulted in another reconstructive ACL surgery. Since it was the same knee, the decision was made to undergo bone graft surgery.
Hendrickson said surgeons filled the ACL tunnel in her knee with a cadaver bone, let it calcify and heal for three months before returning to repair the torn ACL in her right knee last November. It was then that her latest bout of finding trust in her knee began. And for four hours a day for the past year, Hendrickson has pushed herself, her knee and her mind to forget that crash and return to the hill.
"I just wanted to jump again," she said. "I wanted to do everything right, I wanted to be strong. I really didn't ease up on it at all."
Now, with the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, over a year away, she said she must stay healthy to accomplish what she still feels is a very real possibility.
"At the end of the day, my goal is to win a medal there," she said. "I visualize that, I dream about that, I know I can do that."
Hendrickson's worries are no longer so frequent. Those endless days in the gym, dreams of soaring high and making that first landing are now behind her. All she has to do is trust herself, her ability and that rebuilt knee.
"It still hurts — it's fine," she said before traveling from Norway to Russia. "I trust it and it's working well, but today it's stiff as hell."
Twitter: @chriskamrani The Hendrickson file
Age » 22
Sport » Ski jumping
Hometown » Park City
Career highlights » 2014 Olympian, 13-time World Cup gold medalist, overall World Cup season title and 2013 World Championship.
A long year-plus » Returned to jumping in December after 15 months away due to a serious knee injury.