Injury could force triple jumper to end career soon
MONTEGO BAY, St James — After yet another disappointing injury setback that will keep her out of the Jamaican team at the 14th IAAF World Championships in Moscow, Russia, that start this coming weekend, defending Commonwealth Games triple-jump champion Trecia Smith could be forced in the next four months or so to make a decision on her long and well-decorated career.
Smith, who won the World Championships title in Helsinki, Finland, in 2005, suffered a serious Achilles tendon injury, forcing her to end the season and any hopes of appearing in her sixth World Championships later this month. Depending on her recovery and ability to train during the off-season, she said she would make a decision come October/November, as to whether or not she will continue or hang up her jumping shoes.
Even if she is able to compete next year, she has given herself one more season and plans to call it quits at the end of the 2014 season, after three Olympic Games, just missing a medal in Athens, Greece, in 2004 when she finished fourth.
“Since April of this year I’ve been beleaguered with Achilles’ pain that got progressively worse,” she told the Jamaica Observer in an interview on Saturday.
“In the Paris Diamond League (early July) I did significant damage trying to compete,” she stated, adding that a subsequent scan showed “one-third of the medial portion torn with a bit of avulsion of the tendon from the calcaneus”.
At first she said she was “extremely depressed at having another injury, especially after I prepared myself well, jumping well and enjoying training and competing again injury-free”. But she said she has “reconciled myself to it and acknowledge that I’m getting a bit long in the tooth, so these things are part and parcel of what I choose to do”.
An injury-free 2012 season, where she was seventh in the Olympic Games in London, had sparked a new fervour in her jumping and she had said afterwards that she was shelving talks of quitting and was looking forward to the 2013 season.
The former Manning’s School student, who is also a trained physiotherapist, said that she has been working hard at her rehabilitation. She said that she had “something to focus on so I didn’t stay down for too long” adding that she was in Cannes, France, “on work assignment and its beautiful, relaxing and rejuvenating all at the same time, so I’m not
too displeased”.
Recovery time for the injury, she said, is usually three to six months, “but as you know, everyone is different and heal at different rate! I’m walking pain-free and can tolerate double leg push-off so that bodes well for me going into next year and, hopefully, defending my Commonwealth title,”
Smith said.
First, however, she said, she had to “survive winter training and train similar to how I prepared for this year prior to the injury. If those things happen and I remain pain-free and injury-free, then I will do another athletic year before retiring at the end of the summer in 2014.
“Alternatively, if I cannot train the way I should and be in a position to compete at a high standard, then I will be announcing my retirement sooner rather than later. So come October/November, at the start of winter preparation, I will know one way or the other,” the athlete said.
Smith, who placed second to Kimberly Williams at the JAAA National Senior Championships in June, had made the ‘B’ qualifying standard for the World Championships at an indoor meeting in Great Britain in March. She was not named in the Jamaican team for Moscow, having advised the JAAA of her injury well ahead of the team selection.