Sydney: Olympic champion sprint hurdler Sally Pearson has finally begun the road back to competition after her horror fall in Rome and is convinced she will be a contender once again when the Rio de Janeiro Games come around in a year’s time.
On Wednesday, the 28-year-old was still showing the scars from surgery on the “bone explosion” she suffered in the tumble at the Diamond League meeting in early June that left her fearing her lower left arm might need to be amputated.
While keen to shield the rebuilt wrist from the winter chill outside Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Pearson was otherwise upbeat as she helped the Australian Olympic Committee mark the one-year countdown to Rio.
“I’m doing all right, it’s a bit of a slow process, I started my rehab training yesterday and I’m hoping to return to proper training in September,” she told Reuters.
“It’s going slowly, there’s not a lot of movement in [the wrist] at the moment but at least it’s not my ankle, that would be disastrous.
“I’m OK.”
After such a frightening ordeal, Pearson could be forgiven for some trepidation about once again launching herself at full sprint at a line of ten hurdles, 83.8cm high.
“I’m the sort of person that doesn’t dwell on things and doesn’t keep those negative thoughts in my head,” she said.
“I think when it’s time to get back over the hurdles, I think I’ll be OK with it.
“At this point in time I don’t have any fear about it, who knows how I’ll feel when I actually have to face them? I don’t know, there’s always a risk of it happening again, but I’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t.”
