Ski jumper Thea Minyan Bjørseth (22) was a World Championship favorite — ended up in a trauma center

“I remember thinking I just needed to get past the green line. I wanted to win that competition,” Thea Minyan Bjørseth tells NRK.

She is almost alone in the gym at Olympiatoppen. It’s been nearly eight months since the ski jumper suffered what her physiotherapist calls a multi‑ligament injury in her left knee.

Short and brutal: almost everything inside the knee was damaged or destroyed. “ACL, PCL, MCL and the meniscus,” Bjørseth says, pointing to her knee. She almost forgets to mention the elbow: it took a heavy hit in the Ljubno crash, dislocated, and required surgery. “I mostly remember that my elbow hurt badly. That pain drowned everything else out.”

But it’s the knee that now forces her to practice something she’s not good at: patience. “I want things to happen,” she admits.

Hard to talk about the fall

The Norwegian jumping profile still finds it difficult to talk about the fall in Ljubno on 15 February—just over ten days before the home World Championships in Trondheim. It’s hard both because the memories are painful and because parts of the incident are missing from her memory. She had led after the first round, so she was the last woman to jump.

The 22‑year‑old flew down the hill and saw herself approaching the green line she needed to surpass to be sure of winning. Then she got eager and lost control of her left ski on landing. “I noticed the knee wasn’t quite right. It felt like things weren’t sitting in place. But I thought, it’s not that bad, it’ll be fine,” she says. It wasn’t. She needed two operations: the first to repair the extensive damage, then another in June due to heavy scar tissue formation.

The coming Winter Olympics in Italy are off the table for her.

An injury seen in traffic accidents

Orthopedic surgeon and knee‑injury specialist Guri Ranum Ekås, team doctor for the Norwegian jumpers for 10 years, says she has never seen a similar injury in a ski jumper. “When I saw the MRI images, I immediately saw the forces involved were huge,” Ekås says. When three of four major ligaments are torn, the knee has at some point been completely out of place—a knee dislocation. Such high‑energy injuries are typically seen in traffic accidents or falls from great heights. Though they can happen in high‑energy sports, they are uncommon.

Due to the extent of the damage, it was crucial to get Bjørseth quickly to care—at a place not usually used for injured athletes: the trauma center at Oslo University Hospital. “She also had a dislocated elbow. Both injuries required surgery, and a knee dislocation needs rapid surgical treatment to repair or reconstruct the ligaments and address other joint damage,” Ekås explains. Bjørseth was operated on in late February—just as the World Championship ski jumping competitions began at Granåsen, where she would have been one of the biggest favorites.

Tough calls and mental strain

Head coach Christian Meyer recalls a call one month after the fall: “It was hard to get many words out. Many pauses. She was very sad.” In his 14 years as head coach he has handled serious injuries and other challenges; March 2025 brought another difficult conversation. “You can feel very alone, forgotten. I assured Thea she will be one of our most important athletes going forward and would get the best help we can offer.” Bjørseth is grateful: “He’s a safe, steady person in overwhelming situations. He helped me focus on the right things.”

Physiotherapist Maren Stjernen closely follows Bjørseth’s strength sessions at Olympiatoppen. “I’m genuinely impressed. She’s doing very well,” Stjernen says. Exercises are no longer only dull and monotonous; the left knee tolerates more load. “It’s a tough process—perhaps most of all mentally. You go from top‑three in the world to struggling to walk. Facing 18 months of rehab feels very long when all you want is to return to what you love,” she adds.

A battle with the mind

This recovery is also a mental fight. Even if she becomes physically able to jump, Bjørseth wonders if she will dare to be as fearless as before: “I won’t hide that it’s a concern. I want to stand on the start bar with the right conditions to jump far—that’s what I’m working for.”

Her goal is to make her first jump again next summer. The big long‑term target is the 2027 World Championships in Falun, about 500 days away. “I have to try to look there, even if it’s difficult knowing there’s an Olympics this winter—I think I could have had chances there. But yes, a World Championship is also something to look forward to,” she says.

Published 2 Nov at 06:42; updated 2 Nov at 08:15.