Kallur has metal spike inserted in leg | 23.08.2012
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| Susana Kallur has had a metal pin inserted in her shin as she attempts to return from injury. |
Kallur has not competed seriously for two years despite repeated attempts to get back on track. The latest setback came just weeks before the Olympics started: “I had an x-ray [at the beginning of June]. It showed I had a lesion in my leg from a previous operation and that the healing process had stopped completely,” she said.
Following the x-ray it was clear that Kallur needed another operation which she has undergone: “The shin has been reinforced with a 33cm long titanium spike,” explained Kallur. “They bored right down from the knee.”
“It’s not very pretty right now, but this is where the road back really starts,” she wrote on Twitter. What Kallur can expect now is six weeks on crutches and only then can she begin with some light exercise in the swimming pool or on an exercise bike.
“It’s a question now of starting over again from the beginning,” she said. “It’s awesome, but it seems surprisingly natural.”
Kallur had a hurdling test at a training camp in San Diego in May but had to stop after clearing only one hurdle. “The pain was too much for me to put enough pressure on to get over the hurdle” she said at the time. “I had the feeling I was going to crash into it because I did not have the strength to get over it.” It was then that it was decided to have the x-ray.
The last time Kallur competed was in late June 2010. Her fastest time that year was 12.78 in New York early on in the same month. Her career best came when she ran 12.49 at ISTAF Berlin in 2007. In 2008 she set a world indoor 60mh record of 7.68.
Favourite to take a medal in Beijing, Kallur fell at the first hurdle. In the 2007 world championships she was fourth missing a medal by 0.01. She became European champion on home soil in Gothenburg 2006 and won two European indoor titles.
