This Australian medal hope looked down at his foot. It was pointing the wrong way
Kurtis Marschall looked down at his foot and it was pointing the wrong way. Lying on the pole vault mat after a jump at the national athletics championships in Adelaide in April, he knocked the dislocated ankle back into shape.
Marschall, a world championship bronze medallist, immediately feared he had wrecked his Olympic dream.
Australian pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall suffered a gruesome injury.Credit: Getty Images
“I went over the bar and landed on the mat, but I landed on the pole and it [his ankle] just slipped off the pole and I dislocated it. I put it back in myself on the mat,” he said. Who wouldn’t smash their dislocated ankle back into place without seeking medical attention?
“The adrenalin covered up the pain but I could tell as soon as I looked at it that the ankle wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Then it was, ‘oh gosh this is bad’.
“But it ended up being OK. It was my left ankle, which is my take-off ankle and I fully ruptured all the medial and lateral ligaments, but I didn’t have any fractures, didn’t have to have surgery, but I had a necrotic wound on the outside of my ankle which we had to have dug out. But that is all fine now.”
Hang on, a necrotic wound? His explanation is not for the squeamish.
“Because my foot and ankle blew up and swelled up so much I had a blood clot in my foot and didn’t get blood to the tissue so about a 20 cent piece-sized necrotic wound came to the surface,” he said.
“So we got that cut out and tried to train through with just a little bandage over the top of it, because, usually, you skin graft that stuff and get fat tissue and stem cells and put all that in. But we didn’t have time for that, didn’t have time for surgery.
“It’s pretty ridiculous but we are in the position we are because of the enormous support I have had.”
A necrotic wound is a black mass of dead tissue that had to be excavated. Marschall kept training, determined to make the Olympics.
His recovery was surprisingly quick.
Chasing events to squeeze in before the Games, Marschall found a competition in Luxembourg in which to compete before arriving at the Australian athletics team’s training camp in Montpelier. It was … eventful.
”The runway was too short so they had to extend it with some dirt and filler so that was horrific... Then a guy in the middle of the comp landed in the [plant] box on his back and fractured his spine so they had to get the ambulance... I didn’t want to have to jump after that but I got over the opening bar and was stoked with that,” he said.
It was a significant emotional hurdle overcome.
“I just told myself you can’t be that guy who would pull out based on the fact you are scared to jump. I wanted to go out and prove to myself that no matter the situation, the run-up, the conditions, how long we had to wait even with the ankle in the state that it is, and it was all still fine.
A cleared a height of 5.38m a couple of weeks before Paris.
“That will get you through (Olympic) qualifying round,” he said.
World champion Mondo Du Plantis is another level from the rest of the field but Marshall said anything around six metres would put him in the frame for a medal.
“You can’t count me out, just have to get that qualifying round.
“You can always count on a couple of guys getting injured at the last minute – luckily I am still in the race. You can always count on a couple of guys getting so nervous they mess it up, a couple of guys jumping out of their skins, and Mondo attempting a world record. So, if you are amongst that and jumping 5.90s you could put yourself in a good position to medal.
“I have been at a couple of Olympics now, medalled at world champs... I feel like I can do it, so miracles could happen.”
The athletics program in Paris start on Thursday.
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