Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Injured at X games


The X games is kind of like the Olympics for action sports only it’s invitation only and is held every year.


I qualified in 3rd position which I was really happy with as it is my best qualifying position in a major event this year and gives me more confidence in my qualifying gradually improving.


Unfortunately on the qualifying day it had been snowing all morning so the track was considerably slower than the day before in practice so I landed on the flat on one of the features when I didn’t have enough speed to make it to the landing and in the process bruised the underside of my right heal. It sounds pretty lame but it is actually very painful!


I was unsure about weather I would be able to race in the heats the next day but in practice on that morning it didn’t feel too bad (all the ibuprofen I took probably had something to do with that) so I decided to go ahead with the comp.


In my first heat I wasn’t quick out of the gate so fought from 4th place into 3rd (at the X games you are in heats of 6 with the top 3 going through to the next round) I passed into 2nd briefly when I took extra speed into one of the turns but as I was on the inside line which wasn’t the fastest line I went back in 3rd position pretty quick. Then we were coming up to the second to last jump when the two girls in front of me speed checked and rolled over the jump instead of jumping it. I don’t know why they did this as I had been jumping it in practice that day and I made the landing fine. So as I was directly behind them I had a choice of A, speed check as well and follow them over risking the girl behind me passing as I was dumping speed or B, go to the right of the jump and jump it. In that spilt second I chose B. I went to the right of the girls in front and jumped off the jump with as much force as I could. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough after the speed I had lost with the last minute turn I didn’t have enough momentum to take me all the way to the landing of the jump and I landed on the knuckle (where the ground goes from flat to sloped) as a result of that I lost speed allowing the girl behind to over take me on the run up to the last jump, much to my annoyance as you can imagine!


At the bottom I took a ski-do back to the top for the small final (places 7-12) but as I was on the way up my heal started to hurt more and more and I realized I had damaged it further from the final flat landing and I wasn’t going to be able to keep on riding so I got the ski-do driver to turn around and go back down the hill to the medical centre. Another girl also pulled out from the small final due to injury and as I had qualified above her my final position was 11th and she was 12th.


I was very disappointed with that obviously since I hadn’t got the result I was hoping for and I am now injured as well.


At the medical centre they told me that nothing was broken which is good news but just that I have to avoid all impact for as long as it takes to recover. The more impact I have the longer it will take. I am hoping to compete in a grand prix competition in the US next week but that is looking pretty unlikely now. My next world cup starts on the 11th of February by which time I hope to be back up and running.

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