Long road to Salt Lake
Damon Allen perservered knee rehab to get to nationals
Posted: Wednesday February 10, 1999 12:19 AM
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Damon Allen said although it is painful to have missed two of the last three seasons, he has learned from his misfortune. AP |
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The hours of rehab turned into days, weeks and months for Damon Allen. There were the usual moments of doubt, which he wiped away with more hard work.
Now, Allen has a healthy knee and a realistic shot at a medal at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Injuries have ruined two of his last three seasons, just when Allen was progressing through the strong ranks of American men. Those ranks have thinned in this post-Olympic year, and Allen hopes he can hold off the next wave of quadruple-jumping kids.
"I was pretty down having to take the year off," Allen said Tuesday, when nationals began with the compulsory ice dance. "I'd done it two years before that with a stress fracture in my knee. "But I have learned a lot of lessons, that you've got to keep persevering, keep being determined to pull back to the top."
The top spot seems reserved for Michael Weiss, the runner-up the last two years to Todd Eldredge. Everything else is wide open, and Allen believes a place on the U.S. team for next month's world championships in Helsinki, Finland, is attainable. "I was third in the Finlandia Trophy on the rink they'll use for worlds," he said. "When I was there, I bought this set of glasses and I already have broken two. So I have to go back and finish the set back up."
Even thinking about nationals or worlds was painful a year ago. Allen, in the midst of rehabilitation from surgery on his right knee, worked for the U.S. Figure Skating Association at the Philadelphia nationals.
"The two guys who made it were really good, but nationals were tough for me," he said. "Other than the top two, the others really weren't all that wonderful. I thought, 'Oh, man, I could be on the podium, I could be third.'"
Instead, he was trying to get healthy again. Allen needed nearly three months after surgery on Oct. 2, 1997 before he could perform before an audience, at a show in his native Rockford, Ill. "It was about eight weeks after the surgery, in December, that I got back on the ice in Colorado Springs," he said. '"hat was just 10 minutes of steps on the ice, just stroking. It was like, 'Thank God I'm back on.' It was very sweet to get my blades back on the ice.
"I had to go really slow and it is really hard for me. I always was, 'Oh, it felt really good, I'll try one more thing.' They had to harness me pretty much, keep me on a very restrictive pattern."
That meant no spins for the first two weeks back on ice, and no major footwork. It meant no testing jumps. For a top-level skater such as Allen, it meant taking baby steps.
"It really didn't come strongly back until April-May, a good six months of full recovery," he said. "I had no coordination in the air, I kind of lost a lot of that, my quickness and snap in jumps and that took the most time in coming back.
"That first double axel was a sweet reward: I can still do it." How much can he do this week?
"My main goal is to have a lot of wins through the week. Find the good in each practice session and enjoy the week. I won't have my mind set on the short program and the long program. A really good week would be great practices and stay focused on my job and have two strong programs. I am feeling very ready."
The event began Tuesday night with the compulsory dance. With five-time champions Elizabeth Punsalan and Jerod Swallow now professionals, their former training partners, Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev, took first place after the compulsories, worth 20 percent of the total score.
Just behind were Eve Chalom and Mathew Gates.
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