Australia’s Sally Pearson will not defend her Olympic hurdles title in Rio de Janeiro after tearing a tendon in her hamstring, yet another setback in a year beset by injuries.
Pearson, the 100m hurdles Olympic gold medalist in London four years ago and silver medalist at Beijing in 2008, yesterday told Australia’s Channel Nine news that she was shocked at the extent of the training injury and did not have enough time to recover fully ahead of the Olympics in August.
“I’m disappointed — I’m gutted,” she said. “It’s the biggest sporting event in the world that I’m missing out on. I can’t be part of it, and it’s upsetting.”
Photo: Reuters
The 29-year-old Pearson missed 12 months of competition after breaking her wrist in a racing accident, and complained earlier this month that her preparations had been hampered by a “niggly hamstring.”
She only returned to competition on June 5, a year and a day after crashing over a hurdle at a Diamond League meet in Rome and needing surgery. She had three races in Europe before returning to Australia to work on her speed, skipping a scheduled run in Stockholm.
Australia’s Olympic team leader Kitty Chiller said Pearson’s absence was “devastating for us and the team.”
“It was always an uphill battle for Sally to get back to her best form in Rio,” Chiller told a news conference in Perth, Western Australia, before Pearson confirmed her withdrawal.
“If anyone was going to do that, she would have done it because she is such a huge fighter,” she said.
On June 18, Pearson posted a fitness update on her Web site, writing how she had arrived in Birmingham “full of hope and excitement,” but was disappointed with her times “and also disappointed that my body was letting me down.”
“This has been a big year, broken bones, torn calf, degenerative Achilles and hammy problems and that’s just with me. Sometimes I wonder why I still continue to do this sport,” she said.
Pearson had strapping on her left hamstring when she raced in Birmingham, and trailed home in seventh place in 13.25 seconds — almost a second slower than her personal best and a time she described as “disgusting.”
But in the week leading up to Monday’s training mishap, the 2011 world champion said she had felt in her best shape in a year, and was ready to overcome all the setbacks.
“Unfortunately on Monday, my body just didn’t agree with me this time,” she said. “It couldn’t push that little extra bit to the edge. I just tumbled over the edge unfortunately this time, and I tore my hamstring.”
Pearson said she couldn’t risk long-term damage, and a fierce competitive streak prevented her from concealing the injury in the hope of just being able to contest the heats in Rio.
“If I pushed it too early ... I could do some serious injury and make it 100 times worse, and maybe not come back from it,” she said in the TV interview. “I could have gone to the Olympics and still competed ... [but] I go there for 100 percent effort and I wouldn’t be able to give that effort that I would like to bring.”
Pearson said she planned to take time off and wanted to return in time for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, being staged near her home on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier