CALGARY — It happened faster than you can say "an Arabian double front layout gone wrong."
In a fraction of a second, Kyle Shewfelt was soaring through the air, his legs locked underneath him for a spot-on landing; the next, he was lying on the mat, curled up in a ball of pain.
The damage was extensive: The top of the shin bone in both his legs had splintered with a loud crack; the right leg would need a screw to hold things in place; the left leg required a metal plate and two screws; and both knees were hyperextended, with the left one suffering a strained lateral collateral ligament.
As injuries go, it was as if Shewfelt had been jarred and snapped in a violent car crash.
Canadian gymnast Kyle Shewfelt is wheeled around after injuring both his legs last August. He’s recovered and has the scars to prove it. Now, he’s in a race to get himself ready for the Beijing Olympics in August. (CP PHOTO/Jeff McIntosh)
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And yet the worst news of all was the date of the accident: Aug. 27, 2007, less than a year before the start of the Beijing Summer Olympics. For Shewfelt, the 2004 Olympic champion in the floor exercise, it meant he had precious little time to climb out of his wheelchair and out of his braces and regain the strength needed to be a world-class gymnast.
"I was in such pain, but I managed to walk out of the gym on crutches," Shewfelt said of his training disaster in Germany. "I wanted to convince myself I was okay."
Shewfelt is not alone in trying to convince himself he'll be healed and hell-bent for China come August. Rarely, if ever, has there been a Canadian team bound for the Summer Games with more physical and emotional scars than the beleaguered class of 2008. We're talking serious setbacks to high-profile athletes capable of winning medals — from Shewfelt's "two busted knees" to hurdler Perdita Felicien's strained left foot.
Felicien's injury, and her refusal this week to talk about it, has reverberated throughout the Canadian track community. No one is sure whether the former world champion will be healthy enough to compete in Beijing, where even a healthy Canadian team was going to be pressed hard to equal its 12-medal total from the Athens Olympics in 2004.
And Felicien's woes are just the tip of the broken metatarsal.
Also hobbled are: heptathlete Jessica Zelinka, who ruptured a tendon in her left foot at the Pan American Games last year and has had to relearn how to high jump by taking off on her right foot; diver Alexandre Despatie, who broke a bone in his right foot in early April and has had to miss several weeks of training; diver Blythe Hartley, who is still recovering from the loss of her brother, who died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; trampoline gymnast Karen Cockburn, who is coming off knee surgery last fall; and kayaker Mark Oldershaw, who had surgery to remove a tumour before breaking a bone in his left hand last spring.
Toss in swimmer Brent Hayden's recent run of back spasms — he figured they were caused by a Nike photo shoot in Los Angeles — and it's a wonder Canada's Olympic motto isn't "Citius, Altius, Unlucky-us."
"I don't ever remember so many top performers having to deal with injuries of this magnitude," sports psychologist Peter Jensen said. "It's not only that they're injured, but they're pretty severe. It's a little disillusioning to hear."
For sports psychologists, mental preparation is as critical as physical preparation, especially in an Olympic year. With an injury or emotional trauma added to the mix, the mental strain is even more pronounced.
Jensen has worked with hundreds of athletes through six Olympic Games. He is counselling a number of Beijing-bound participants in an effort to keep them from contracting an affliction he calls "optimal rectumitus."
"It's a shitty outlook on things and you start to worry: 'Oh, my God, I'm injured. I'm not going to make this,' " he said.
Penny Werthner is the official sports psychologist for this Olympic team and teaches human kinetics at the University of Ottawa. She is a firm believer that some good can come from adversity. At the very least, it can provide an athlete with a renewed sense of purpose.
"I know this may be a trite thing to say, but sometimes I think it makes them stronger," said Werthner, who ran track at the Montreal Olympics in 1976.
"Sometimes it can give them a different perspective that really helps with their performance. ... Are we going to go to the Games and really try to do well or are we going to sit around and be bummed because I've been injured for six months?
