Emma
George on recovery trail as Dragila
flies high
Mike Hurst for the
IAAF
28 November
2001 - Sydney - On a day when America’s
Olympic champion Stacy Dragila became
the first pole vaulter to be voted
Female Athlete of the Year, Australia’s
former world record-holder Emma George
was just happy to be running again.
While Adelaide-based Tatiana Grigorieva has displaced her as “Australia’s vault queen” ginger-haired George said yesterday she is determined to fly high again.
George is still the Australian record-holder with a leap of 4.60m which was her 15th world record when she jumped it in Sydney in January 1999.
Dragila, a former rodeo cowgirl, broke George’s world record and increased her own record eight times this year to 4.81m.
But George was hurt going into the Olympics and she has not competed since the Games, after which she had bone grafts on both feet.
And then things got worse.
Five months ago she had spinal surgery - a “laminectomy” - to fuse three joints in her lower back: the fourth lumbar joint (L4) to the fifth (L5) and then L5 to the first sacro-iliac joint (S1).
“It was pretty serious. My back had been really sore,” George told The Sydney Daily Telegraph yesterday.
“I was having epidural pain-killer injections just to walk around.
“I couldn’t get up on my toes anymore.
“I was told if I didn’t have the operation soon, the muscles wouldn’t be able to come back to full strength.
“When I was in a wheelchair for a month and then on crutches because of my feet, it hurt my back. But the training fall in 1999 just before the Seville world championships didn’t help either.”
George resumed running training two nights ago in Perth, striding slow 400m repetitions. She has also been lifting weights and doing some gymnastics exercises.
“I should be able to pole vault again hopefully in January,” George revealed.
“I’m hoping to have my first competition in the actual Australian Championships (in Brisbane in mid-April), but I might still be vaulting off a short approach.”
George is the reigning Commonwealth Games champion and while Olympic silver medallist Grigorieva is obviously now the favourite for Manchester in July, George is hopeful she will be there to defend.
“I’d have to make the Australian team first. I’m in a pretty positive frame of mind. It was an awful experience, but I’m feeling good now,” she said.
“And it’s wonderful for Stacy that she has been recognised by the IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations) as the top woman athlete in the world this year.”
George is coached by Alex Parnov at the West Australian Institute of Sport in Perth in the same squad as the 2001 world champion Dmitri Markov and the 1996 world junior champion Paul Burgess.
Mike Hurst is Senior Sports Writer for the Sydney Daily Telegraph
