TJ Lanning replayed his harrowing downhill crash over and over in his mind, revisiting every little detail.

The American skier tried to figure out if there was anything he could have done to prevent the spill in Lake Louise, Alberta, late last month that fractured a vertebra in his neck and shredded his left knee.

Could he have salvaged a run that had suddenly gone so wrong?

Lanning frequently scrutinizes his actions following a bad wipeout, usually detecting some way the crash could have been averted. This time, he couldn't.

"Flukiest thing ever," Lanning told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from a condo in Vail, Colo., where he's recuperating. "Usually, my crashes where I get injured, in hindsight, there's something I could've done different."

This wreck _ the face-plant at high velocity, his body flipping over and skidding down the hill _ was simply unavoidable.

He's just thankful for one thing _ no paralysis.

"I was actually pretty lucky," Lanning said. "Pretty damn lucky."

This is what he counts as lucky:

_ Surgery to fuse two vertebra in his neck to stabilize the fracture.

_ A second operation to "fish out" the meniscus in his left knee and suture it back down, as well as to repair some of the extensive ligament damage.

_ In another six weeks, a return trip to the operating table to fix his destroyed anterior cruciate ligament.

_ His neck immobilized in a collar brace for the next month, hopefully to avoid another round of surgery.

The 25-year-old Lanning was churning down the mountain, tightly in his tuck when his run began to unravel.

The light was flat, making bumps on the course hard to detect. Lanning hit a small mound of snow that had built up, sending him careering at nearly 75 mph. He was on his way to staving off a fall, when the flag from the gate wrapped around his right ski for an instant.

That altered his balance and veered him off the course, his right ski plunging into a patch of piled-up new snow. Lanning somersaulted through the air, his right ski popping off, his left remaining on.

He skidded for a while down the steep piste, finally coming to a stop near the protective fencing.

As he sat up in the snow, he glanced at his leg, which was jutting out at a 90-degree angle. He figured his femur was fractured.

A moment later, the pain hit, an excruciating ache in his knee, followed by an intense discomfort in his neck.

His howls for help echoed throughout the course.

"Most pain I've ever experienced," he explained.

Before he was airlifted off the mountain, medical personnel stabilized his neck and realigned his dislocated knee.