Reiti 2004

Reiti 2006 is fast approaching. Sarah Jamieson will be running the 1500m and no doubt hoping to duck under 4 minutes becoming the first Aussie female ever to do so. When I look at the word Reiti, I still cringe a little. As I was looking through the calendar of events for the 2006 season I was glad there was no women’s long jump listed for Reiti. Now, I wish there was.

So what’s so special about Reiti? Reiti is a town in the centre of Italy, about an hour and a half drive from Rome (or an hour if you’re in the car with a lead-footed Italian). Reiti hosts an IAAF Grand Prix Meet each year. The track is fast and the weather is warm - usual ingredients for successful performances.

Reiti 2004 was one week after the Athens Olympics - the date remains fresh in my mind - 5th September, 2004, it was a Sunday. After my fourth placing at the Olympics and my impressive (even if I do say so myself) 6.96m, I was gearing up to the IAAF World Athletics Final in Monaco. The Olympics are quite draining on an athlete mentally and emotionally. I was possibly even a little flat as a result on that fine, sunny day.

Travel to the meet was a little inconvenient, waiting at the airport for a few hours for other flights to arrive before the one and a half hour bus ride (at least it wasn’t a boat I guess). Then going through the process of picking up numbers and finding out which hotel I was booked into seemed to take another hour. There really wasn’t much I was impressed with on the day before the meet. I didn’t really know anyone else at my meet hotel and I didn’t speak Italian so even finding out about meals was a challenge.

On Sunday, I warmed up, not feeling as emotionally prepared for the meet compared with a week earlier (understandably). On the runway, I felt fast. I popped a solid 6.88m on my second jump giving me a clear lead. My fourth jump, again I had fabulous speed on the runway then stuck my foot out at the board rather than keeping it under my body (it’s often a compensatory strategy for not being able to control your speed, rather than keeping the last stride active, there’s a tendency to drop the hips on the second last stride and prop at the board). This gave me ridiculous ups (height off the board). It sounds good doesn’t it? The problem with getting height this way, apart from the stress on your back, knee and ankle at take-off, is it creates forward rotation that is virtually impossible to counteract. I remember thinking mid-air: “should I try and land which will result in a face full of sand or should I just run-through?” Sounds like an easy decision - I took the run-through option. I land my left foot down, closely followed by my right foot which takes the full force of the jump. The only problem was my hips were at 90 degrees, with my right leg perpendicular to the ground so my body was parallel to the ground. For those who know a little about physics: speed + height + rotation + 90 degree angle + ground reaction forces = huge moments! The impact caused my knee to hyperextend (bend back the wrong way) and I heard a distinctive pop.

My hands went out to protect my face, though I did taste a little sand. I can remember making a repetitive “ow” noise. Surprisingly I heard my noise, thought I sounded silly, recalling some footage from the Olympic Games when a pole vaulter landed awkwardly and was screaming for at least a minute and so I stopped ow-ing. I clutched at my knee which hurt while I was carried from the pit. I think my jump was recorded as a no-jump (not that it would’ve been over 6 metres).

Being carted off on a stretcher, the crowd clapped my exit from the track. As I was taken into the medical room, as a physiotherapist, I was hypothesizing about my diagnosis and prognosis. Being optimistic, I was thinking maybe it’s only minor and I’ll just be out for a couple of months. Since it was a hyperextension injury, I feared my ACL may have been involved and I was hoping, more than anything that I hadn’t ruptured it which would require a reconstruction. The reason I didn’t want to have a reconstuction is because I knew it would take me 6 months before I would be able to run again. I didn’t like the idea of having part of my patella tendon grafted, particularly since jumpers are often prone to patella tenonitis and a hamstring graft didn’t seem much better. The doctor prodded and moved my knee to try and make his diagnosis. He didn’t seem to have an answer - at least nothing that was translated to English.

It was in the medical room that I first shed some tears. Not because of the pain, but because of the timing. Realistically, it was much better timed than my knee injury in 2003, a month out from the World Championships. I was finally close to my personal best, set in 2002. The previous two years had been quite rocky for me. A week after jumping 7 metres in Melbourne, I bruised my heel in Perth. This contributed to my disappointing sixth at the Commonwealth Games but was not the only reason I failed to achieve my goal of winning Gold in Manchester. I felt like things were finally coming back together, my head was in the right place and I wanted to beat the Russians before the year ended.

On the way to the ambulance, I managed to see the final long jump result. My second round jump had secured me the win - hardly a consolation. I was taken in an ambulance to the local hospital. My first ride in an ambulance and I can tell you I felt every single bump on that road. Whilst waiting for a couple of hours in the small Emergency Department, I filled in my time texting home (I’d already woken up Jason, my then fiance, now husband, to tell him of my incident). I became quite impatient about the process and I had no intention of receiving medical intervention in Italy. I just wanted some crutches, some ice and a ride back to the hotel. Jason sent me a sensational text: “Just steal some old codger’s walker and make a run for it.” I’m pretty certain it was the first time I’d smiled since I landed that jump.

The doctor reviewed me and acknowledged there was some damage to my knee but I refused intervention. The hospital organised a pair of crutches and I went back to the hotel. I hardly slept at all that night. There was no cold left in the icepack and my knee was starting to burn. I was so grateful when the morning came. The trip back to the airport, with speeds of up to 200km/hour, was only an hour and I was lucky enough to get 3 seats to myself on the plane back to London. Fortunately my sisters were both living in London, so I had a chaffeur, a cook and most importantly some support.

After three doctors’ appointments and an MRI, I was booked for surgery. I remember looking at the MRI before I went back to the doctor and seeing that my ACL was still intact. I was somewhat relieved. The MRI showed the postero-lateral part of my knee joint capsule had been torn. On the Friday, just before theatre, I had a plain X-ray of my knee which showed my fibula was fractured. The full extent of my injury wasn’t realised until surgery. On the operating table, the doctor was able to hyperextend my knee 25 degrees. My cruciate ligaments were both damaged but not completely severed. My biceps femoris tendon was completely ruptured. My lateral collateral ligament was holding on by a few threads, mostly likely saved by the avulsion (snapping off) of the top of my fibula bone. My lateral meniscus was sitting out of place too. It took them 3 hours to piece my knee together again.

To prevent a blood clot following surgery, I had to inject a blood thinning agent, heparin, into the non-existent fat on my stomach everyday for a month. I soon grew sick of looking at the bruises on my stomach and settled for the not so obvious, but rather awkward buttock region.

Jason flew over as soon as he could to help look after me too. After spending 10 days in a back slab, I was cast in a full leg fibreglass cast. The cast was great, my leg felt so supported and within a few days, I was at the gym with Jason doing arm weights and single leg squats on my good leg. (Admittedly, I’d been doing some stability exercises prior to my operation then started modified chin-ups and dips on architraves and bench tops within days of my operation.) After 2 weeks in the cast and a few less comfortable days in a brace, I finally flew home.

The doctor said I may never jump again and most likely if I do, it wouldn’t be to my previous standard. It took me 13 months to do a full run-up jump and it was 18 months until I was back to my best again at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The ACL reconstruction would’ve been the easier and faster option.

This was the start of my most challenging year which has shaped me into the athlete I am today. I look forward to the opportunity to compete in Reiti again and overcome any associated anxieties.

Overcoming these challenges are the ingredients for success.