Her right leg shattered, short track skater Allison Baver is all grit in bid for 3rd Olympics

Skater Allison Baver battles pain, eyes Olympics

MARQUETTE, Mich. — Allison Baver arrived at the short track speedskating nationals worried about her right leg, still on the mend seven months after a full-speed crash into the boards left her unable to walk.

Then she came down with the flu, forcing her to skip the last day of practice before the four-day meet began.

“It’s really not fair,” she said, wallowing in a rare down moment while considering that major injury and illness are not supposed to happen in the year leading to a Winter Olympics.

Two days into the meet that will determine the five-woman short track team for Vancouver, Baver is fifth in the overall standings, a mere 100 points ahead of sixth-place Jessica Smith.

Baver had a much-needed day off Thursday, with racing set to resume Friday at the hockey rink on the Northern Michigan University campus. She’ll be skating in her two strongest events, the 1,000 and 1,500 meters.

“I’m really happy that I’m here, so I want to just stay positive,” she said. “I feel blessed that I’m able to skate as fast as I am right now and that I’m able to have this chance.”

Her hopes of making a third Olympic team — and getting a chance to win her first medal — didn’t look good in February after Baver shattered her lower right leg while attempting a pass in the 1,500 final at a World Cup meet in Bulgaria. She crashed into the thinly padded boards backed by unforgiving steel reinforcements.

“My leg looked like a twig,” she said.

The accident left her with a tibia broken in four pieces and cartilage damage. Her right ankle joint absorbed the blunt force, and the 29-year-old skater faces the prospect of having pain walking up and down stairs the rest of her life.

She declined to have surgery in Bulgaria. Instead, she made a painful plane trip home to her parents in Sinking Spring, Pa., with her leg set in an old-fashioned plaster-type cast.

“If I moved my knee a little bit, I could feel the bones moving in there,” she said. “That was the most traumatic part of the injury.”

She didn’t have surgery until 10 days after the accident. Baver couldn’t walk for more than two months, relying on her parents to help her get around.

In April, she moved to U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., to begin rehab. Two months later, Baver rejoined the national team in Salt Lake City, where she had been one of the best skaters for the last eight years.

“I carried the team, I was the girl to beat. I led by example,” she said. “Here I am at the bottom, working on balance, things you don’t even think about when you’re training with the national team. You don’t realize what you have until it’s gone. It was really hard for me.”

Just putting on her skates is a daily challenge, not to mention moving her ankle and bending her knee on the ice.

Baver arrived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan earlier than the other skaters to ensure the swelling caused by flying subsided in time to train. She wears compression hose to reduce the pain and swelling and no longer runs as part of her warmup.

“The day before I left to come here was first day I was able to hold my own body weight with one leg to get in skating position. It’s a very basic thing for speedskaters,” she said. “I was so happy I was able to do it.”

Doctors told Baver the typical recovery time for her injury is one year. In a case of bad timing, the Olympic trials were moved up three months from their usual date in December, giving her even less time to prepare.

“My mom said to me, ‘Allison, you forget that you just started skating again.’ My coaches forget what I’m still dealing with,” she said. “If I can get past this competition, I think I’ll have a good season.”

Baver finished fifth in the nine-lap time trial and was ninth in the four-lap trial Tuesday in her first competition since the accident.

“I had to put things in perspective after the races, like I guess I’m doing pretty good,” she said. “I can’t say that I’m at my best. I’m dealing with a lot more, but that’s OK. I just have to rise above.”

She finished second in the 1,500 final Wednesday, but was disqualified for impeding — a typical infraction in unpredictable short track skating — in the 500 ‘B’ final.

“This is the hard part,” she said. “If I can get past this, I can do anything.”