Abby Steiner pausing track career

Justin Gatlin

errr...(cough) gambling suspension (cough)

That's not several years. Big difference. AS is looking at 1-2 in the bag already then another 2. That is a surgery wrought with complications if your goal is professional sports.

She had a crap surgeon. I can see 2 surgeries if she slipped or something, 3 surgeries for a heel spur is crazy. Easy surgery, long rehab.

y'ins got 2 olympic medals?

Good gracious, no. Hell no.

Kerri D'Amato

Plus she changed her name to Keira

Ritz didn’t have haglund’s surgery. He had an operation done on the sheath of the tendon itself and the surgical site became infected. I think he wore a wound vac device for a year trying to get it to heal.

Haglund’s surgery is a real challenge to come back from, especially if you have open surgery vs the Tenex version that the bowerman people used for a few years. Brazier had to have multiple follow up operations to remove scar tissue because after the bone was removed it still hurt. And then you have the extreme challenge of getting your calf complex to work again at a high level. His bounce back to winning USAs is definitely an outlier.

I've had three surgeries for Hagland's and can attest that it's no easy thing from which to return. The first two were on my left foot in November 2012 and April 2013. The second was required because I slipped on stairs and pulled a small portion of the Achilles off the bone. In 2022 I had the same surgery on my right foot. After my first two surgeries, it took six years before I could run consistently for a period longer than 5 months, because my Achilles would just become inflamed. Each break was 6 months long. The bone growth really abraded the Achilles, and tore completely through in one spot. Recovery was much better after the latest surgery because there was little damage to the Achilles, but it was 8 months before I could return to easy running and another 3 before I could start training. Three years later I'm still limited to 4-5 days running per week (I'm also 62, so there's that).

I hope AS can recover and return; being from Ohio myself I'm a fan of hers.

Who was her college coach that put together a schedule that had her racing 60 races a year?

Michael Jordan didn't pause his basketball career. He was serving a gambling ban.

Steiner has been plagued with injuries since her soccer days. But then you watch her run and wonder if that funny technique of hers was a ticking bomb on her body. Unfortunately, some athletes develop bad technical gestures early on -in her case, forcing turnover in a smaller stride- which remain addressed as a result of becoming so good too quick. And then considering changes in mechanical pattern takes time aka slows them down temporarily, they stick with what works.

I don't necessarily think that improving her technique was going to make her improve her PRs dramatically but it would have allowed her to run those amazing times for 5-10 more years if she wanted to. Hoping for a miracle on her body and switch that form girl!!

Georgia Hunter Bell is one of the most successful "break takers" ever, and looks good for at least one medal in Tokyo

Gatlin and Shelby

Her form wasn’t like that in high school. Below is a video of her close in the 200 at the Ohio HS state championship. You can see the difference.

My younger sister played club soccer with her in high school. Yeah, her ACL injuries were unfortunate but being as resilient as she is, she always came back stronger. I hope she can now but this seems worse than her other injuries.

Glitter Bomb Turbo/Kobbs is still an ass hole.

I had endoscopic Haglund's surgery on my left heel back in late Aug, 2023, and the outcome has been very good. I can run as much as I want -- including hard fartlek, strides, and intervals -- without any pain in the left heel or Achilles. I haven't noticed any loss of function in that leg, either.

I may just have been lucky in my choice of surgeons (here in Japan). I chose him, even though his hospital is a 2-hour drive away, because he had published a journal paper documenting his success with both athletes and non-athletes.

He debrided the Achilles (removed embedded bone) during the procedure. That involved cutting away parts of the tendon, so he had me come back for 12 monthly followup visits to have the tendon examined by ultrasound and see how well it had healed. I was running decent mileage (30-50 mpw) during that time, but generally refrained from anything hard until the ultrasound showed that the tendon had fully recovered.

I'm now considering having the same procedure done on the other heel. But I'd prefer to avoid that by using a custom orthotic I've had for several years that seems to prevent pain by correcting my slight leg-length discrepancy.

FWIW.