Grimaldi excited by return to competition
IT had been 503 days since Anna Grimaldi jumped competitively when she took flight on Saturday.
After running a 60m sprint two weeks earlier, the Paralympic gold medallist returned to the long jump pit at the Caledonian Ground. The 21yearold has battled back from a big stress fracture in the navicular bone in her left foot.
While a Saturday afternoon in Dunedin is not quite the world championships — her previous competition — it was an ideal comeback scenario. She came off a 10stride runup — wellshort of her usual 32m one — to jump 4.79m.
In the 100m she managed a time of 13.04sec. She had been ‘‘pretty nervous’’, although it was good to come back at a lowkey meet with no pressure.
‘‘Just before I did my first jump I was like ‘Whoa, this is so familiar but also feels so foreign’,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s been ages. I can’t sort of believe it’s come full circle and now I’m back.
‘‘It’s so exciting. I still can’t believe that it’s taken this long but that we’ve come back now, because it felt like for a while there that it wasn’t going to happen.’’
Her foot had held up well and, while being a bit tight, she was happy to have made it through. There was still plenty of room to improve in both, which left her excited.
One new feature was the attachment on her right arm, supplied by High Performance Sport New Zealand.
Having been born without a right hand, she was heavier on her left side and the attachment was intended to balance her out.
‘‘Athletics is a sport of symmetry and I’m not symmetrical, so I thought I should try to even that out a bit.
‘‘It’s been difficult getting used to it.
‘‘I’ve been running with it since April constantly.
‘‘It was difficult at the start, but now it feels kind of natural, just getting the hang of it.
‘‘Your legs follow what your arms do and to not have that weight and momentum from my right arm may impact [my performance].
‘‘I’m not really sure. I’ve never really had an arm — my body’s just adapted from day one to not having one.
‘‘It’s definitely feeling like it will be helpful and it’s helping with the mechanics of running now.’’
Set to have her wisdom teeth removed next Tuesday, it will be Grimaldi’s last competition before Christmas.
She hopes to compete at the Lovelock Classic in Timaru on January 5 and has an eye on the national championships in March.