How Olympic Injuries Destroy Bodies

Mariana Pajón is one of the most decorated BMX riders in the world and can quickly list some of the achievements of her career: 18 world championships, two Olympic gold medals in racing (in 2012 and 2016) and one silver, won in Tokyo in 2021.

But Pajón, a Colombian, can also recount the more painful costs of such a long ride: 25 fractures, 12 screws, eight surgeries and countless torn ligaments and tendons. The medical equipment in her left arm and knee contained so much metal that she carried X-rays with her. Opening a door or getting her a glass of water hurts.

“My joints are like those of someone who is over 80,” Pajón said with a laugh. She is 32.

Pajón, who has been racing professionally since she was 4, didn’t complain about her injuries during a recent interview. They’re simply a fact of life for athletes.

Wear and tear naturally degrade human bodies, even the most talented. But elite-level performance, especially in high-impact Olympic sports like wrestling, rugby, and gymnastics, inherently carries greater risk. Shoulders give out. Ligaments tear. And for some, metal screws and titanium plates become just extra hardware in a lifelong pursuit of gold, silver, and bronze.

Pajón spoke about “what one has to give, including one’s body, to realize a dream and achieve something for one’s country.”

“It looks so uncomplicated and so brisk — it’s a 35-second lap in Paris,” she said, “and you go through so much, through so many operating rooms, through so much pain, but it’s not uncomplicated.”

Fans watching her and other athletes compete at the Paris Olympics may not realize the pain and suffering they endured to get to this point. They certainly won’t see the hardships that will last well beyond this summer, sometimes for the rest of these athletes’ lives.

“A lot of Olympians will just push their bodies to the limit to see where they can go,” said 33-year-old Kyle Dake, an American who won brown in freestyle wrestling at 74 kilograms (about 163 pounds) in Tokyo and takes part in the competition in Paris.

In his own words, he spent years “trying to find the limits and limitations of the human body.”

“I’ve discovered those boundaries and now I know where to go and where not to go,” he continued. “But it’s amazing what we all go through together, trying to be the best at our sport. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”

Due to the nature of their sport, Olympians like Pajón and Dake have suffered a lot. In BMX racing, the bikes are stiff, so the body absorbs most of the force from the jumps. Pajón said riders can reach speeds of more than 35 miles per hour.

“We don’t have suspensions,” she said. “Our joints are suspensions: wrists, elbows, shoulders, backs, knees, ankles. The technique helps compensate for that. But it’s a sport that, at a high level of performance, is well, but it’s also unhealthy.”

In gymnastics, joints are subjected to constant, bulky loading. In boxing, punches are delivered to the body. In wrestling, bodies are twisted and thrown to the mat. In rugby sevens, players tackle each other, often running at full speed. In field hockey, sticks can crush fingers so badly that they can lead to amputation.

In equestrian sports, falls from horses cause injuries to riders. Boyd MartinThe 44-year-old American has undergone 22 surgeries and broken 19 bones. He has five plates, two screws and a metal rod in his body.

“When I wake up in the morning, my body is really sore,” said Andrew Knewstubb, 28, a rugby sevens player from Up-to-date Zealand who won a silver medal at the Tokyo Games. To compete in Paris, He defeated two ACL tears and an infection in his left knee. (Up-to-date Zealand were knocked out in the quarter-finals this year.)

Knewstubb said that while visiting the athletes’ canteen at the Olympic Village in Paris, he was amazed to see so many different body shapes and sizes, as well as scars from injuries and surgeries.

Pajón’s career may be one of the most dramatic in terms of the breadth of ailments and the sheer willpower (or stubbornness) to keep going. To name a few:

• In 2008, she injured her left shoulder while training in her hometown of Medellín, leaving her with a severe open fracture. The damage involved arteries and required two plates to repair.

• Noticeable are broken ribs and a bruised kidney, the result of an accident in 2012. He considers this his worst injury.

• There’s a left knee injury from 2018, when her anterior cruciate ligament exploded after her foot hit the asphalt after a jump. The complications from that surgery and recovery were so numerous that she considered retiring.

• And then there’s the injury to her right elbow from 2019, when she dislocated the joint and tore all the ligaments, and it got worse because she was still competing. Last year, in December, she had to have three surgeries to be able to compete in Paris.

“There are things I could have done much more responsibly: better recovery or not pushing my body so teenage,” Pajón said. “But my intensity and obsession with winning, being the best and training – I also have to have a limit and think about the future. But when you’re teenage, you don’t think about that. I gave it my all.”

While wrestling will always be physically demanding, Dake said advances in technology, training and medicine can prevent some injuries and speed up recovery.

“It used to be that you’d jump into a garbage can with ice in it and you’d be fine,” said Dake, who estimates he’s broken every finger at least once and broken his ribs at least four times, in addition to his shoulder blade. He’s also had two foot surgeries and reconstructions on his shoulder and knee.

“It’s a lot more sophisticated now and you can really customize it to suit everyone,” he said. “It’s pretty frigid that we’re in a place now where if you’re looking for something, you can find someone to support you, and that makes life in the sport a lot more enjoyable.”

Pajón said she learned to wear more protection when riding and sultry up more. She urged teenage riders not to make the same mistakes she did. She relied on people like her husband, Vincent Pelluard, a former Olympic BMX rider and her current coach, and her mental coach, Jonathan Bustamante, to support her through the tough times.

But she also said she has learned to accept the pain she feels every day. Even though she doesn’t look like an athlete when she runs because of her injury, she said, and although her body may creak when she walks up the stairs, it’s all worth it. She wants to keep competing.

“I gave a lot to get a lot,” she said, “and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”