A few days ago Juan Martín del Potro externalized an internal ordeal in his coexistence with pain. He said goodbye to his sport, hung the racket and his words were a mixture of contained release and rage. «From the age of 31 I do not go up … A ladder, I can’t kick a ball, I never played tennis again. Do I stay 15 years old so that at 50 they put the prosthesis and live more or less well at 60? (…) Hopefully one day it ends, because I want to live without pain ».
As there are hundreds of athletes disseminated by the world that could sign that statement. Live without painan impossible mission for so many retired athletes whose common link is to pass review in a specialized clinic and place a prosthesis with 50 or 60 years because their body has worn out to limits that they did not imagine.
Del Potro retired two months ago in a match against Djokovic after being the reference of tennis in Argentina during the 21st century. The winner of the US Open in 2009, 22 titles in the male circuit, double Olympic medalist, number three in the world in 2018 and leader of the Argentine team who won the Davis Cup in 2016, the tennis player revealed the fight he maintains with his listed body.
«I get up and take between six and eight pills, a gastric protector, an anti -inflammatory, an analgesic, another for anxiety … they invite me to play football and I am the one who carries the mate, or they will play the paddle and I am the one who makes the videosIt is terrible … After that first surgery, I could never climb a staircase without pain … I feel that I have to tell you how I am because it is good for me.
Tennis is not found in the list of the 20 most prone to injuries published by a group of scientists in the ‘British Journal of Sports Magazine’. A payroll that leads in its first five positions the BMX, the taekwondo, football, mountain cycling and boxing. On the opposite side, the safest sports, with an average rate of injuries that ranges between 2.5 and 4 percent, there are canoeing, shooting, rowing, archery and swimming.
«I hardly have swimming patients, it is true that it is not an harmful sport -corrobora ABC the doctor Isabel Guillén, Head of the unit of the foot and the ankle of the Cemro clinic in Madrid. Among the players you find chronic ankle instabilities and many hip osteoarthritis. In tennis are the prostheses. Sports with contact, rugby, basketball or handball, it is very easy for them to leave sequelae for life ».
Tennis drags physical sequelae between the elite. Well -known in Spain is Rafa Nadal’s injury carousel that defined his uncle Toni with surgical precision. “Rafael is an injured person who plays tennis.” Gustavo Kuerten was also the world number one for 43 weeks between 2001 and 2002. Three times Roland Garros champion on the 20 -year -old border, he declared himself defeated by his body when he retired with 31 years. «I can’t even run. I don’t know what it is to live without pain for fourteen years. I do not regret having taken the body to the limit, but when you are giving everything, you do not think about what your life will be in ten years.
Arteries as columns
To the former Santi Blanco was presented by his mentor in Banesto, José Miguel Echávarri, as a dolphin of Miguel Induráin. «The 2000 tour It will not be yellow, it will be white, ”said veteran former director. Santi Blanco never won the tour. Two stages in the Tour of Spain are its greatest booty as a professional. The Salamanca excicist charges a permanent disability pension.
Endofibrosis of the iliac artery pushed him with the withdrawal. His left leg stopped working normally. «The artery narrowed and the limb did not register the blood well –Santi Blanco explains-. When I made a maximum effort, my leg was put as a column. A stone. I had to leave it ».
Blanco acknowledges that he brought his body to the limit, like most squad professionals. And the agency reacted in protest mode. «I asked Mauleón advice, who had also lived the same and told me that he operated and had reproduced him over time. So I didn’t operate. I started processing disability, I went through a medical court and a year later, they gave me permanent disability. He disabled me to be an athlete, although not to work in another job that did not require physical effort. The excorrant receives A state pension And kill the bug of cycling working as a guest guide in the races.
A study by the University of Navarra concludes that 25% of bone lesions in sport are due to fatigue and excessive effort. For every 40 athletes an accident occurs a year; For every 4,000, a case of disability and for every 40,000, a death. Motoring and motorcycling are sports with the most bone fractures, 28 % of the total (femur, warm, forearms, vertebral). They are followed by the equestrian, 27% (scapulae, clavicles, scaphoids), fighting and boxing, 24% (face bones, hand, phalanges, feet), skiing, 21% (tibia, ankle, knee, thumb phalanx) and cycling, 16% (clavicle, escaping, forearm, bruise).
“We are not made to practice sport so repetitively and so intense,” says Dr. Guillén. It is rare for a sport professional not to have injuries or sequelae of mature age. Except butragueñoI know a few. Fran Murcia (former basketball player) often tells me that his greatest happiness is to spend a day without knee. Professional sport is not good for the skeletal muscle system, at 50 or 60 the chronic injuries begin to appear ».
Legs in the leg
Álvaro Benito, football commentator and singer of the Pignoise Group, was one of the hopes of Real Madrid thirty years ago. An injury to the U2 -21 team (anterior cross ligament breakage, internal collateral and internal knee meniscus) destroyed his career with a physical ballast that still lasts. «I live with a lot of pain, it hurts when walking, but I do not pay attention to him. One day I told myself that the knee was not going to condition my life. I take care of it just so that it survives by my side. Maybe he dies before me because it will have to put on a prosthesis ».
Joseba Beloki lived a terrible fall in the Tour de France 2003, that day in which Lance Armstrong crossed a sower of cereals to dodge the accident. The Vitorian exciclist had a displaced hip fracture, intra -articular fracture of the elbow and non -displaced fracture of the wrist. The physical tear, which took more than a year to recover, was a strange case. Although he lives with an osteosynthesis -“irons anchored to the right femur” -can make a more or less normal life. «I have a decompensation of strength in the right leg. I already noticed when I was a cyclist. I get skin eruptions in the area of irons and I notice the temperature changes, but nothing more. Luckily and after what happened to me, I live without great pain ».
“A normal person begins to have osteoarthritis problems at 75 or 80 years,” Isabel Guillén describes. A former professional sportsman, at 50. Almost everyone has assumed what awaits them. Many comment when we treat them that they would give everything to live without chronic pain. The exercise is healthy, the professional sport does not ».
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