Ready to bounce back
that that’s the way I want to go out. I want to go out on my terms.’ ” As she lay immobilized for four days waiting for her operation — “ probably the worst four days of my life” — Dionne began to do the math. The doctors had told her it would take three to six months for the neck to mend. Taking the optimistic view, she figured she could be back on skis by Jan. 1 and compete in a World Cup at Lake Placid, N. Y., on Jan. 17 to meet the Olympic qualifying criteria.
“ Part of getting ready for the Olympics is being resilient and this is going to test me in a way I’ve probably never been tested before,” Dionne said yesterday in a conference call. Dionne was hurt on what was scheduled to be her last jump of the day. She was doing her most difficult manoeuvre, a tripletwisting double somersault with two twists on the first somersault. The previous attempt didn’t go well so she decided to go for it. So she went faster than she should have. She missed the takeoff. And there was a tailwind. Her neck was tucked into her chest when she plummeted 9 metres into the hard snow, tearing all the ligaments in her neck, rupturing a disk and placing incredible stress on her spinal cord.
“ When I hit, I knew instantly something was wrong,” said the two- time world bronze medallist. “ I felt pain in my neck like I’ve never felt before.”
It took a seven- hour operation to repair Dionne’s neck. The doctors grafted bone from her hip and secured it with a titanium plate and screws. She was told beforehand that it was a routine operation; afterward the lead surgeon told her he hadn’t slept the night before because of nerves. She still gets emotional talking about what happened, but figures that’s part of the healing process.
“ The emotion makes me more hungry to get back,” she said. “ Every time I get sad, it also reminds me how badly I want to be there and how badly I want to win. So that helps me to go a little bit further and push a little bit harder.” While cautioning that her long- term health is the most important, Freestyle Canada CEO Peter Judge isn’t counting Dionne out for Turin. “ Knowing that Dee is as tenacious as she is, it’s totally viable that she could be back.” Her parents are also in her corner.
“I gave them a pretty good scare,” Dionne said of mom Fay and dad Steve, who both flew to Australia after the crash. “ But they also understand that my dream and my goal for the last four years is to go and bring home a gold medal and they’re going to stand by me.” Dionne said doctors have told her that once she heals she will not be at any greater risk of a neck injury than any other skier. She is already ahead of schedule with her rehabilitation, which she will complete in Calgary with other athletes training for Turin. She was told to build up to a half- hour walk over the course of a month — then did it the day after surgery. She ran for 15 minutes yesterday. “ It’s the slowest jog I’ve ever done in my life, but it’s a jog,” she said. Dionne has also managed to maintain a healthy sense of humour, adding that she has discovered an unexpected plus to the hardware the doctors used to reconstruct her neck.
“ I don’t beep at the airport,” she said, “ because I went through that on the way home. I was pretty psyched about that.”