Friday, August 11, 2000
Bad knees end Phelps' comeback
Gold-medal gymnast out of trials, Olympics
The Associated Press
Jaycie Phelps' knees gave out a month too soon. With the Sydney Games only a month away, the second-youngest member of the Magnificent Seven announced Thursday she was withdrawing from next week's U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials because of chronic knee problems.
“We knew it was a long shot, and it's too bad the cards fell this way for us, but at least we tried. At least we gave it that shot,” said her coach, Geoff Eaton. “It's much better to try and know than not (try) at all and always wonder.”
Phelps, who trained for the 1996 Games under Mary Lee Tracy at Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy, had been training under Eaton in Arizona.
Four other members of 1996 Olympic team, the first U.S. women's team to win Olympic gold, are expected to compete next week. Combined scores from the trials (60 percent) and the U.S. Gymnastics Championships (40 percent) will be used to rank the gymnasts, and a selection committee headed by Bela Karolyi will choose the six-person squad.
Phelps, 20, wasn't even supposed to get this far. She has had chronic knee problems throughout her career, and her left knee was surgically repaired three times. After her last operation, to replace the meniscus in her left knee in 1997, doctors told her she shouldn't do gymnastics again.
When she decided in November to try for the Sydney Olympics, doctors cautioned her against doing the vault or floor exercise because the pounding would put too much stress on her knee. She went ahead and trained for all four events, anyway, trying to absorb most of the pounding with her right leg.
But by trying to protect her left leg, Eaton said she injured her right leg and now has some fraying in the meniscus of her right knee. Rather than risk further injury, Phelps, decided to withdraw from the Olympic trials.
“We were getting to the point where we might really cause some damage,” Eaton said. “It was probably an intelligent move on her part to look at this and say, "I don't know if I want to undergo eight months of rehab just to compete at trials.'”
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