Frustrated Australian Olympic swimmer Stephanie Rice would have ditched season but for Olympics

Triple Olympic champion
Stephanie Rice would have
ditched this season out
of sheer frustration at her
shoulder injury were it not
for the London Games, the
Australian said after her fi rst
race of the year on Friday.
The 23-year-old, who won
the 200 and 400 meters individual
medleys as well as the
4x200m relay gold in world
record times in Beijing four
years ago, competed on Friday
for the fi rst time since
surgery on a torn tendon in
her shoulder last December.
While satisfi ed with her
time of four minutes 49.93
seconds to fi nish second in
her 400 medley heat at the
New South Wales championships,
Rice could not disguise
her frustration at how
her Olympic preparations
had been disrupted.
“I think if this wasn’t an Olympic
year, I would have
pulled out of the year because
it’s been the most frustrating
journey,” she said.
“It’s been so frustrating, especially
in an Olympic year,
the most exciting year, and
I’m just trying to do everything
I can to get myself on
the team.
“Hopefully everything I’m
doing now is making my
character stronger,” she added
with a laugh.
Dogged by injury since her
stunning Beijing performance,
Rice has not won a
major international title in
the intervening four years,
although she does retain the
400 medley world record
(4.29.45).
Rice’s tendon has not been
fully repaired and she has
been reduced to trying to
manage the injury and doing
what she can to keep fi t outside
the pool through gym
work, running and cycling.
“They can’t repair a tendon,
it’s a six month rehab,” she
said. “I obviously didn’t
have time for that, so they
just went in and cleaned it
up as best they could.
“I don’t know if that was
the best option right now,
to have surgery, because it
didn’t really do anything
so I had a cortisone a few
weeks ago and that seems
to have settled it down a bit
and I’ve been able to get
through a decent amount of
training.
“Hopefully, it will hold
together for the next few
weeks until the Olympic
trial.”
Australia’s Olympic trials
take place in Adelaide from
15-22 March and although
Rice was back in the water
on Friday, the injury meant
even her participation in
other events at the meet at
Sydney’s Olympic Pool was
by no means certain.
“The whole process at the
moment is trying to swim
and train when it’s not so
sore because when it’s sore,
I have to back off,” she said.
“The last thing I want to do
having got this far is to make
it worse. I’ve had to learn to
judge what a good sore is
and what a bad sore is.
“It’s been sore every session,
it’s never like I get in
and it’s awesome, but some
days it’s less sore and that’s
good.” Rice admitted to
“nerves and anxiety” before
her return to racing and also
some resignation that she
would be unable to prepare
for London in the same way
she did for Beijing in 2008.
“I can’t judge what I did
four years ago to what I’m
doing now, I’m a completely
different athlete,” she said.
“I have to learn to compensate
where I can. “I’m past
the point of being worried,
it’s just a case of if it’s there,
it’s there, if it’s not, it’s not.”