Season in a sling
CALGARY — Another Canadian medal hopeful for the 2010 Winter Olympics has entered the world of surgery and rehabilitation.
World record holder Jeremy Wotherspoon doesn’t know if he’ll race again this speedskating season, but vows his broken arm won’t be an issue in his preparation for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.
“It’s definitely affecting my ability to train and prepare to skate right now, but when we start training at the beginning of next season, my arm is going to be healed and I’ll be treating it like any other season,” Wotherspoon said Wednesday at the Olympic Oval. “I’m not going to be dwelling on past problems or past performances.”
The 32-year-old from Red Deer had surgery on his upper left arm last week. He crashed in his second World Cup 500-metre race of the season Nov. 8 in Berlin.
“No matter what has happened in your life, it’s disappointing to break your arm and that’s generally true for anybody,” Wotherspoon said. “Right now I’m more focused on resting and healing my arm as fast as I can because it’s something I’m going to need for the rest of my life.”
Teammate Michael Ireland of Winnipeg, a 15-year veteran of the speedskating team, fell and dislocated his left shoulder in the 500 metres the day before Wotherspoon’s spill. Unlike Wotherspoon, he’s not expecting to have surgery and faces about three months of healing.
Canada has set a goal of winning more medals than any other country at its own Winter Games. An impediment to getting there is keeping the athletes healthy enough to get to the start line.
Wotherspoon’s teammate Cindy Klassen, winner of five medals at the 2006 Games, is about two months away from returning to the ice following surgery on both knees in July.
Downhill skier Jan Hudec, a world silver medallist in 2007, just started skiing on snow again last week after tearing knee ligaments in January. Surgery on both shoulders to Regan Lauscher, a World Cup medallist on the luge team, has delayed the start of her racing season.
“One of the greatest challenges we have, one of the biggest threats we have to achieving our goal is the health of our athletes,” Own The Podium’s Dr. Roger Jackson said recently. “We have so few athletes to choose from. We’re very, very thin on the very top-level athletes that are expected to do well.”
On the bright side, freestyle skier Jennifer Heil is back racing moguls this winter. The Olympic gold medallist from 2006 took last winter off because of chronic pain in her left knee.
Wotherspoon isn’t panicking about 2010 because he sat out the entire 2006-07 World Cup season and returned to his sport better than ever. He set a world record in the 500 metres in his first race with a time of 34.03 seconds. He won 12 World Cup medals, including eight gold, and also claimed the world title in the 500 last season.
“I know from past experience that I can do things a little differently than other people have and I can take time off and it hasn’t hurt me,” Wotherspoon said.
Both Wotherspoon and Ireland felt the setup of the speedskating track in Berlin may have contributed to their injuries.
“The mat system isn’t adequate. It’s not safe,” Ireland said. “I actually said to some skaters two days before (the race) ’you don’t want to fall here because you’ll end up breaking your leg or your arm or something.”’
A metal railing around the circumference of Berlin’s track was the problem, said Ireland, and the protective mats against the railing were inadequate in cushioning the speedskaters when they fell and skidded into them.
“Those mats, because here is a metal rail behind it, they don’t give at all,” Wotherspoon said. “If you hit the mats in Calgary, they slide out onto the running track so they’re like a brake and slow you down.
“In Berlin, it’s like hitting something hard that doesn’t give and so all your force goes into whatever part of your body hits. I think if the mats had given, I wouldn’t have twisted so hard and wouldn’t have put as much torque on my arm when I twisted.”
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