Well as you may or may not know my season has come to a premature end yet again. Damn it indeed.

During last years off season training I was having a fair amount of difficulty with my patella tendon in the form of some seriously painful patella tendonitis. It got to the point where I was having to limit the amount of training I could do to about 50-60%.

Although I was struggling with this injury I was still skiing fast, especially in downhill and super g. In the weeks before I left for the northern hemisphere season I underwent some injections into the patella tendon at the A.I.S. in Canberra with the leading doctor, Greg Lovell, and physio, Craig Purdam which we believed would alleviate some of the pain and inflammation.

We were right, it did help the pain upon my return to training, for about 4 days. Since the season had another 5 months to go and I hadn’t started competing yet, it’s an understatement to say that I was mildly disappointed.

Perhaps a little pessimistic and/or stubborn I refused to give up and was adamant about continuing. So I raced the first world cup slalom in Reiteralm, Austria. I finished with a 41st placing, not bad considering I’d had about 10 days slalom training in the past year and was having to take a significant amount of anti-inflammatorys just to get out on the hill.

After that we were headed to North America for a month of speed training and the first world cup downhills. After stopping with slalom for a while my knee was hurting a little less which was nice and downhill, although still painful was possible. Training was going well and my next race in Beaver Creek, Colorado was the world cup super combined. The super combi consists of 2 runs, first downhill and then slalom. My downhill portion was quite good, especially since I’m known as a slalom skier. I was much more confident than in the training runs and with my mum, sisters and one year old nephew max in the stands I was determined to be fast and finish in one piece. I finished in 18th place and was pretty happy with that as Beaver creek is a fast technical and downright gnarly downhill. Do a youtube.com search of it and see for yourself.

The slalom on the other hand was a let down on my behalf. Having not skied slalom in a month and only doing a few training runs in the morning, my knee pain was back and confidence low. I skied the 2nd half of my race poorly, really only skiing to finish. I finished in 27th place which was nice as I was inside the top 30 and made some world cup points, although I was disappointed in myself for not skiing to anywhere near my potential which had I done so could have easily seen me inside the top 10.

After that we headed back to Europe where I attempted to ski slalom again. With instant pain as soon as I made the first turns I pushed out 2 days on softish snow which was difficult but possible. At the next race in Bad Kleinkircheim in Austria we had a training day on a water injected piste to simulate the race hill. I made one run. The pain was immense from the first turn and with the snow being harder than concrete every bump and chatter mark I hit was like getting a sledge hammer to the knee. I knew straight away that that would be my last attempt at skiing a slalom race for the season. So, what were my options?

I was either heading home to get the necessary operation to enable me to be pain free for the next season or try and push out the remaining three world cup super combined races to try and finish the season with a top 30 ranking in one discipline. So that’s what I did. The last super combi was on the 3rd of Feb. so with that in mind I decided to limit my skiing entirely to a little training and those races.

I had a week in Utah with my family for Xmas. The first family get together where my mum, two sisters and I were together in 14 years. We all had our significant others and a few friends as well and it was awesome.

After that however I got back to Europe to start training again. I skied for two days prior to the New Year and just from that I couldn’t ski again until the 4th of Jan. I did one more day of gs training and although managed to get through most of it I was struggling, big time. I got home, did the regular icing and cool down and tried to do some exercises to gauge my strength. On a one leg squat with no weight I almost couldn’t get up. That was it. The turning point in the season.

I spoke with my coaches and we decided that If I couldn’t get up from a one leg squat what hope would I have in the next downhill race, Wengen in Switzerland which is one of the toughest races of the season with a two minute thirty downhill and speeds of up to 150km/h, of one, making it down and two, making it down alive.

So that was it. Another season over. I was bitterly disappointed and upset, but more determined than ever to get healthy and prove myself again. I had been in contact with my surgeon in Sydney, Dr David Wood, and he was ready to put me under the knife, for the ninth time, just as soon as he got home from holidays on the 22nd. I got everything in order over the next few days and headed home to a sun drenched Australia for my second semi summer in a row.

I am now one week post op and feeling good. The doc tells me that the tendon was very bad but not quite as bad as the same tendon in the other knee that he operated on two and a half years ago. With that now 100% and pain free he and I are confident that I will have a successful recovery and will be back at 100% in the next 6 months. Great news.

So it’s a summer for me, some working to help pay the bills, rehab and some serious training on the program.

Thanks for every ones support over the years. We have all expected a lot from my skiing, no-one more so than myself and be sure that those expectations will come to be reality shortly.

Have a great summer/winter and I’ll see you on the hill again soon.

Cheers
Jono