He also is credited with inventing microfracture surgery, which involves drilling small holes in the bone to allow bone marrow to come to the surface and form new tissue that can replace damaged cartilage.
He moved to Vail, Colo., and opened the renowned Steadman-Philippon Clinic and Research Institute, where many of the world’s top athletes have sought treatment. Dr. Steadman is now retired from medicine and public life. Dr. Marc Philippon, a Canadian hip specialist who became his protégé and partner, said Steadman’s breakthroughs and the recent focus on reducing inflammation by attacking so-called bad cells has changed how both Olympians and normal people experience recovery from serious injuries.
“We want guys to ski longer and better, and to age well,” Philippon said.
Felix McGrath, a former Olympic skier and the father of the Norwegian racer Atle Lie McGrath, said he believed the pandemic, which forced a more compact schedule that limited training time early last season, was partly to blame for the spate of injuries last season, including to his son and other top Norwegian skiers.
“It was tiring,” McGrath said of the logistical challenges the pandemic forced skiers to deal with. “No one had ever been through it or dealt with it.”
Cochran-Siegle tries hard not to think about his misfortune the past few years.
A burly, 6-foot-1 Vermonter and son of the 1972 Olympic women’s slalom champion, Cochran-Siegle has a calm temperament but a daring, occasionally reckless style.
He recovered from knee surgeries early in his career and was coming off a World Cup win, in the Super-G in Bormio, Italy, when he crashed and fractured the seventh vertebra, known as C7, at the base of his neck.