Gymnastics: Courtney Kupets' Olympic hopes haven't been dashed by her Achilles' tendon tear
By Candus Thomson
Sun Staff
December 26 2003
GAITHERSBURG - The line between elation and despair is a rust-colored scar,
the length and width of a ballpoint pen, that runs from Courtney Kupets' heel
to her calf.
In June, Kupets was on top as the 2003 U.S. all-around women's gymnastics
champion. Now, the 17-year-old is pushing herself through the grind of
rehabilitation, trying to prepare for the U.S. championships and Olympic
trials in June.
"I have plenty of time from my point of view," says Kupets, who sandwiches
a full day of classes at Gaithersburg High School between grueling exercise
and physical therapy sessions.
Kupets' carefully charted course to the Athens Olympics was derailed on the
eve of the team finals at the world championships in August. While practicing
her floor routine, Kupets tore an Achilles' tendon.
"She did her first pass and turned to make her second. It snapped on
takeoff," says Kelli Hill, her personal coach and U.S. women's team coach. "I
knew right away."
Gymnastics insiders called the accident to one of the team's most versatile
and consistent athletes "disastrous" and "devastating," with USA Gymnastics
president Bob Colarossi predicting it would take Kupets a minimum of seven
months to recover.
Hill agrees: "It's not career-ending, but after a head or neck injury, it's
as close to career-ending as you can get."
There had been warnings. Kupets complained of tenderness two days earlier.
But a magnetic resonance imaging test read by three doctors found nothing
alarming, and the team physician cleared her for competition.
Through the vault, the uneven bars - on which Kupets was the reigning world
champion - and the balance beam, things seemed fine. She was on her final
event of the all-around program when the tendon gave out.
On the drive to the hospital, Kupets cried. Team officials insisted she
return to Maryland immediately for surgery. The trip home from Anaheim,
Calif., with her mother, Patti, took forever. First, she sat on the runway for
four hours, her foot encased in ice, then had an overnight stay in Chicago
when they missed their connection.
With Kupets and teammates Ashley Postell and Annia Hatch sick or injured
during the competition, the team went to what Colarossi called "Plan E."
The reworked roster took the team gold medal, with Carly Patterson, Tasha
Schwikert, Hollie Vise, Chellsie Memmel, Terin Humphrey the picture of
triumph, holding aloft yellow and blue flowers tied with a golden ribbon.
Kupets learned the good news when her father reached her and her mother by
phone.
"I was happy for them because they worked so hard, but I was kind of sad
that I couldn't be there to see it," she says.
Hill now regrets Kupets' swift departure. "I kicked myself for not keeping
her at worlds. She worked hard to get there. What difference would one day
have made?" she says. "When the kids were on the podium and she wasn't, I
wanted to laugh and cry. I still have trouble looking at the pictures."
Back to work
Three days after surgery, doctors removed the splint and she began
exercising. She wore a protective boot and hobbled around on crutches for a
month, then she was liberated from them.
"I had a limp for a long time," she says. "Pity? Right in the beginning.
But if you keep being mad, it takes longer to get well."
Her mother kept her busy by letting her paint her room - wide horizontal
stripes of pink, white, purple and blue. The down time also enabled Kupets to
get her driver's license.
"The injury was my left foot, and I drive with my right," says Kupets,
grinning.
But despite the distractions, Kupets still faced the deadly dull routine of
rehabilitation.
"It's hard at 6 in the morning when we're driving to therapy," acknowledges
her father, Mark Kupets. "I'm sitting there thinking, `Why doesn't she
complain ... why doesn't she say, "I've had enough"?' She doesn't."
Kupets has faced adversity before. She went to the 2002 world championships
in Hungary with a stress fracture in her big toe. After reviewing her options
- the worst that could happen was a clean break that would end her chances -
Kupets decided to compete.
When she fell off the beam, the questions started.
"I'm outside running and talking to God, wondering what it's all about,"
says Mark Kupets. "Then a voice told me, `Because she's going to win the
bars.' "
And Courtney Kupets did, capturing the U.S. team's first gold medal by
defeating five-time world champion Svetlana Khorkina, who fell twice.
In June, she won the U.S. all-around title by the slimmest of margins to
join Dominique Dawes of Silver Spring and Elise Ray (Wilde Lake) as the third
Hill-trained gymnast to hold the top honor.
"She's tough," Hill says. "She's not a fearful kid. She has great
coordination and awareness. While she's flipping and tumbling, she can feel
what's wrong and make a correction."
Skills returning
Hill says she hopes to enter Kupets in competitions in January and
February, starting with bars, then adding the beam, vault and floor exercise.
"She's slowly bringing her skills back to the competition level," Hill
says. "She got a better than 50-50 shot [at the Olympics]. The Achilles' is
holding strong. If everything stays the same, she'll make it."
Making her comeback even more difficult is that Kupets will have to climb
past women who ably filled in at the worlds. Six gymnasts and two alternates
will be chosen to go to Greece.
"It's going to be close," USA gymnastics spokesman Brian Eaton says. "She's
still got until June. In some sports, that's a long time, but in gymnastics
some of the athletes already will have competed for months."
With a massive American flag looming behind her, the tiny gymnast practices
a series of precise pirouettes and powerful jumps on the balance beam over and
over again, her face a mask of intense concentration.
Afterward, she carefully lowers herself from the beam to the floor and
stretches her lower legs.
"The hard part is getting up early to actually do it," Kupets says of her
six-day-a-week training regimen. "I take it week to week. I'll be ready. I'm
not going to have any more setbacks."