© Zsuzsanna Vekassy
Emma Columnist
Wiggs Paracanoe champ Emma discusses ‘when injury strikes’
A
S any athlete will tell you, injuries are part of ‘the job’ - the relentless training regime and constant strive for more is punishing on your body and your mind. However, I’ve been lucky that in my career so far I’ve not suffered any serious injury. Yes, I’ve had niggles and little injuries that disrupt training for a few weeks but nothing major. Until last August that is, when a moment of complacency led to an accident in the gym which would change not just my life but my sporting future. That fall in the gym left me with a displaced bone and ruptured ligaments in my wrist that required surgery. I was just a few weeks out from the World Championships, it was devastating. I had been having my best year yet, winning four gold medals paddling two different boats in pursuit of challenging for double gold in Tokyo. We’d made more gym gains than we could have imagined and got faster times on the water than we had thought possible, but all our progress was gone in a moment. Despite the pain and damage, the medical team managed to patch me up to at least line up at the world champs and our amazing year of training allowed us to still perform to some degree and bag a couple of medals. But I knew the injury was big and our future uncertain. Agilitymagazine | 2
