Jana's toe woes
Jessica Halloran | July 11, 2008
JANA RAWLINSON is unfairly blaming her toe for her injury troubles, according to her surgeon, Mark Blackney.
Rawlinson said she had suffered a host of injuries since Blackney performed surgery on the second toe of her right foot in January.
Rawlinson said the operation had caused bio-mechanical changes and altered her gait, that after two weeks of training, her Achilles tendon was inflamed, that she then started suffering plantar fasciitis (a painful inflammation in the foot), halting her race plans. Then came a tear in her right calf.
"You can't put them all down to the toe," Blackney said. "She obviously does. I don't know how you can because they are other parts of the body. I don't put it down to that, and that's what I do for a living.
"I feel sad for her, and I was hoping she would run and win gold. I was hoping that she'd win, and that we'd helped her in some way to win."
Blackney said he believed that Rawlinson was "happy" after the surgery and suggested that the dual 400 metres hurdles world champion's arduous training program might have taken its toll, rather than the toe being responsible.
Blackney, a foot and ankle specialist who consults for six AFL clubs, the NRL's Melbourne Storm and the Australian track and field team, said Rawlinson's toe was in very bad condition before he operated on it.
"The toe was terrible before we got to it. We made it good. I think everything is inter-related, but it's hard to put one foot problem on to the other. All the issues she had all relate to training and general health. She's put her body through a lot. We've seen athletes have these injuries without toe issues. I can't see how she puts it all down to a toe injury.
"There's still damage in there in her toe. We haven't been able to cure it as it's an arthritic problem. There's no particular complication from her operation … she had a bad problem. We helped it. My understanding was that her toe had vastly improved by our surgery."
Blackney said Rawlinson came to him in January unable to run because of the problem. She had stubbed her toe on a concrete step after winning a hurdles race in Monaco, midway through last year's European season. She was in pain during her 400m hurdles gold medal victory in Osaka.
In January, she said she felt something was severely wrong in her right foot during training session but was still able to complete the session.
"Halfway through the session I felt this funny clicking feeling in my foot," Rawlinson said in January. "I think I must of clicked it back into place because I was then able to run out the session."
That evening, Rawlinson could barely walk. A scan showed a piece of cartilage had come away from the joint. A week later, Blackney performed keyhole surgery to remove fragments from the toe.
"She couldn't run any more by the time she came to me," he said. "We performed an arthroscopy and we took out some of the fragments, and she did extremely well from that. She might put it down to overcompensating but it's probably just training. A lot of those problems people get anyway."
Rawlinson has since attributed her injuries to complications from the injured toe. She was keen to avoid a repeat of her Athens nightmare, when she had knee surgery three weeks out from the Games but still managed to get to the start line to finish fifth, so she flew an AIS physiotherapist to her training base in London to work on the toe.
With world record holder Yuliya Pechonkina pulling out because of a heart problem and Athens gold medallist Fani Halkia having barely raced, she was an outright favourite for the gold medal.
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