Nesbitt takes a break to let left leg heal
Christine Nesbitt hasn’t laced up her speed skates since the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and isn’t sure when she will again.
The former Olympic champion in the 1,000 metres isn’t retiring, but she’s delayed the start of her season. Nesbitt might not race at all this winter.
The 29-year-old from London, Ont., is rehabilitating her left leg which essentially gave out on her in the months leading up to the Winter Games in February.
Nesbitt captured Olympic gold in the 1,000 metres in 2010 and set a world record in the distance two years later. She’s won the 1,000 at the world single-distance championship three times.
A consistent podium finisher in World Cups, Nesbitt’s performance suddenly went sideways in the months leading into Sochi where she finished ninth in the 1,000.
“I have no idea when I’ll be back skating,” Nesbitt told The Canadian Press on Thursday. “It could be this season. The plan is to come back, but it just depends on how my body heals. Last year, I pushed myself far beyond what I should have, but it was an Olympic season. I still view it this way. I had no option. I couldn’t take the year off.”
She believes the years of skating counter clockwise around ovals and leaning into her left leg simply took their toll at the worst possible time.
“We’re still not really able to pinpoint what it was,” Nesbitt said. “We do think it was an overuse injury, so many years of being in that skating position and pushing my body really hard.
“When you lose strength and coordination in that leg, when you’re turning left, you have so much more pressure on it than you do on your right leg in a crossover. That’s why I was losing my balance in races.
“I just wore out some parts of my body and they just were never given enough time to regenerate and heal and for the complementary muscles and tendons to get stronger and support the speedskating muscles.”
The 11-member Canadian longtrack team announced Thursday by Speedskating Canada was smaller in number than in previous years, although 20 athletes were named to the national development team.
After producing a combined 13 medals in the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, Canada’s long-track team won two in Sochi. Denny Morrison of Fort St. John, B.C., won silver in the 1,000 and bronze in the 1,500.
Nesbitt was among four women named to the team along side Ottawa’s Ivanie Blondin, Regina’s Kali Christ and Calgary’s Kaylin Irvine.
Morrison, Calgary’s Gilmore Junio, Winnipeg’s Tyler Derraugh, Laurent Dubreuil of Levis-Saint-Etienne-de-Lauzon, Que., Regina’s William Dutton, Jamie Gregg of Edmonton and Alexandre St-Jean of Quebec City make up the men’s squad.