On Tuesday night Christian Sprenger was inducted into the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre Path of Champions, before the induction he spoke to The Western Australian about his road back to the pool after suffering a shoulder injury last summer, “(I) have had a lot of specialists look at it and stuff like that and at this point it looks to be a fairly lengthy period before I get back into the full swing of things,” said Sprenger.
Last summer the Australian swimming star was looking to build the success he experienced at both the 2012 Olympics and 2013 World Championships. In London he earned a silver in the 100 breaststroke and bronze in the 4 x 100 medley relay and followed that up the next summer by winning the gold in the 100 breaststroke and silver in both the 50 breaststroke and the 4 x 100 medley relay.
Sprenger was one of the favourites to win gold in the sprint breaststroke events at both the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2014 Pan Pacific Championships. Coming into the Commonwealth Games he had the world’s top time in both the 50 and 100 breaststroke, but the shoulder injury kept him from challenging in either event.
At the Commonwealth Games he finished third in the 50 and missed the finals in the 100 breaststroke. The injury kept him from competing at the Pan Pacific Championships altogether.
“I’ve got unfinished business but I want to make sure I am 100 per cent before I commit back to any racing or training,” Sprenger told The Western Australian.
“(I’m) just making sure the time is right. I’ll give it a real solid effort to finish off my career.”
His shoulder injury is not cut and dry. It appears even that his early efforts at rehabilitating from the injury may have done more harm than good, “It looks to be the tissue inside the tendon has just almost switched off a bit and just not been repairing itself properly.”
“The more I would do exercises without knowing this wasn’t repairing itself it was just causing more damage.”
“No matter how much physio work was being done it would never have been able to fix what was going on.”
With Cameron van der Burgh still swimming well and young breaststrokers like Adam Peaty and Ross Murdoch making their presence felt, when healthy Sprenger will not have an easy time challenging for gold in Rio.
I hope he comes back to his top shape, he was ready to take golds on Commonwealth games. He was a serious threat in every breaststroke event!