TORONTO — A frightening spinal injury forced Derek Drouin to shelve his track and field season.
The reigning Olympic high jump champion has a bulging disc in his neck, which kept him out of the Commonwealth Games in April. The Canadian announced earlier this week that he was shutting it down for the season to avoid risk of serious injury.
"We've decided that it was in my best interest to get this completely figured out before we go back to a sport where it's my job to land on my neck," Drouin said.
The 28-year-old from Corunna, Ont., has been "having confusing nerve issues," including a loss of sensation.
"It's the kind of thing you don't want to mess with, given that it's obviously derived from the spine."
The 2015 world champion is hoping to avoid surgery, and said the good news is that his MRIs have shown marked improvement just from doing some specific exercises.
He's also been able to keep up his daily training schedule in Toronto. The only limitation, of course, is landing on his neck in the pit.
"I've been really lucky that it's not a typical injury that has kept me completely out. I'm still going to practice every day, doing all the stuff I normally would," he said.
Drouin's injury history reads like a med school textbook. He captured bronze at the 2012 London Olympics a year after rupturing two ligaments in his foot, an injury that required surgery to implant two metal screws. Shortly after winning gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, he revealed he'd competed with two stress fractures in his lower back.
Last season, a nagging Achilles tendon injury forced him out of the world championships in London.
"The body of a high jumper," Drouin said. "They seem to just be piling up ... when it rains it pours. I'm hoping there will be a ray of light at the end of this."
He said the aim is to avoid surgery, but that it "may very well be the final straw," particularly if the injury threatens his future well-being.
"I've got hopefully a long life after sports, so we're definitely playing it safe," he said.
"At this point we're hoping that things are moving along quite well on their own. I'm basically doing everything I can to avoid that (surgical) route, but you never know, that might be the path I have to take. I've spoken to a lot of experts, and I've been assured that given surgery, it won't be too inhibiting, it won't be too bad of a recovery, and I should come out on the other end of it."
If there's a silver lining, Drouin said, it's that this isn't a bad season to sit out since there are no world championships or Olympics.
"This season my main goal was Commonwealth, when that didn't work out ... so it's been an OK season to have to sit out," Drouin said. "Right now I'm doing pretty well, I'm staying sane, I'm enjoying watching from a distance, and hopefully I'll continue to get more eager to get back out there, hopefully I'll be refreshed and ready to go next season."
He's not the only Canadian athlete to skip this season.
Melissa Bishop took the season off to have a baby. The world silver medallist in the 800 metres is due to give birth any day. And triple Olympic sprinting medallist Andre De Grasse had a late start to the season after the hamstring injury that knocked him out of last summer's world championships.
Drouin's announcement comes ahead of next week's Canadian track and field championships in Ottawa.
Drouin would have been a favourite to win gold at the Commonwealth Games in Australia. He won gold at the Games in 2014 in Glasgow, and also won the Pan American Games in Toronto in 2015.
Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press
