No ski-ing for Blakely

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 32

No ski-ing for Blakely

By

TIM DUNBAR

A knee injury suffered during training in the United States should keep Stuart Blakely off skis until well after the New Zealand season starts. The 21-year-old • Canterbury skier was unable to race with the New Zealand team in the recent world alpine championships at Gar-misch-Partenkirchen in Germany because of the injury. Blakely had set off with the team for Europe in December full of confidence about lowering his F.I.S. start points but he injured his knee just a week after early training began at Mammoth Mountain in California. Back in Christchurch, Blakely said last evening that he had been “really disappointed at the time” but had stayed on with the team to help, the coach, Jan Tischhauser, with training and watch the top overseas racers. As a result of the accident he had tom the medial collateral ligament off the inside of his right knee and was "stuck in hospital” for four days. The knee was operated on and the doctors stapled the ligament back where it had come from and put his leg in plaster for a month. “I was talking to a lot of racers at Garmisch and it

seems that it is quite a common accident. Normally it puts you out of action for about'six months,” he said. Blakely said that it had taken a while before he started moving once more but he had lifted weights with the leg for some time and “eventually I was able to bend the damn thing again.” He is now waiting to start on a full-time strengthening programme and intends to keep off skis until late June or early July. Last season Blakely was easily the most consistent skier on the national circuit and was a clear 15 points ahead of his fellow New Zealand representative, Scott Kendall (Auckland), in the men’s Reizenstein Cup. But he does not intend to concentrate too much on the races this season, with his injury. “I’ll be mainly building up for the European winter but will enter a few races here — probably the F.I.S. races and one or two others.” It was only towards the end of last season that Blakely started to recover fully from an ankle injury suffered before the 1976 natTony Ineson, the New ionals and this further injury compounds his misfortunes. “I’ve had my share of good luck and bad luck,” he admitted.