elka graham to miss worlds
Dual Olympian Elka Graham will miss this year's world championships in Montreal after she was forced to undergo arthroscopic surgery in Melbourne on Thursday on a nagging right hip injury and will now not compete in the Autralian World Championship Trials.
Graham, one of Australia's leading middle-distance swimmers who won Olympic relay silver in Sydney in 2000, will be out of the water for two months.
"I do a bit of cross-training, that would have started the degeneration of the hip problem," Graham explained "Then one day we had a kicking set and I started doing my first lap with a kickboard and something felt like it tore . . . a real sharp pain. That was back in December.
"I've been doing the best job I can with icing it and intense physio but it got to the point a couple of weeks ago that it was throbbing too much at night and I couldn't sleep very well or drive the car without it hurting, and my training started getting slowly compromised.
I guess I knew it was going to be touch and go getting to trials, and it is disappointing for it to become reality only 10 days out, and I suppose I could have pulled through . . . but that would have been a risk."
Graham said she had considered holding off on the operation, but admitted such a delay would see her struggle to be fully fit for next year's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.