by IAN HANSON - OCEANIA CORRESPONDENT SWIMMING WORLD MAGAZINE
While her fellow 2020 Tokyo gold
medallists will headline the 2023 Australian Swimming Championships on the Gold
Coast today, local star Chelsea Hodges will be sitting in the grandstands after
undergoing major hip surgery to save her career – ruling her out of this year’s
World Championships in Japan.
Hodges will spend the next four
months in rehab before she can attempt to swim breaststroke again.
So when her fellow competitors are
introduced for this morning’s 50m breaststroke heats at the Gold Coast Aquatic
Centre, the home pool of he Southport Olympic star, the Australian record
holder and defending champion, will be cheering on a new title holder.
The 21-year-old breaststroker, whose
Olympic dream came true in Tokyo as part of the gold medal winning Australian
4x100m medley relay with Kaylee McKeon, Emma McKeon and Cate Campbell, has
undergone her second hip surgery – similar to what she required seven years
ago.
“I will be out of the pool and into
the cheer squad at this year’s Australian Championships and Australia Trials
ready to watch my fellow Dolphins smash it at the Worlds,” said Hodges.
“This year hasn’t planned out how I
expected but I’ll be coming back stronger than ever.”
A recent Instagram post revealed her
fate saying: “Since January I had been rehabbing a stress fracture in my lower
back…..however the week I was cleared to get back to some normalcy (and) after
only 200m of breaststroke I started getting some really bad pain that was very
familiar.
“After a few scans I found out I had
torn my cartilage in my right hip (with) extra bone on my pelvis which requires
surgery, (the same surgery) I had on my left hip, seven years ago.”
Hodges coach Sean Eels has provided
this update on Chelsea’s progress.
“Chelsea had the surgery last week
and will be about 16 weeks in rehab before she can swim breaststroke again,”
said Eels, the man who has taken the local Southport girl from age grouper to
Olympic gold medallist.
“She is taking the positives – even
with the stress fracture it would had to have been a perfect eight weeks of
training going into this year’s Trials in June.
“And Chelsea isn’t the type who just
wants to ‘make teams’ – she wants to contribute to the medal tally.
“(But the good news is) she will make
a full recovery and we are looking forward to some consistent training and
racing opportunities towards the back end of the year.”
Hodges holds the Australian and
Australian All-Comers record for the 50m breaststroke she set last year at
30.15 with her fellow Olympic team member and World championship silver
medallist over 200m, Jenna Strauch (Miami, QLD) the fastest entrant into
today’s eight heats.
It’s an opening day that will also
feature Australia’s fastest female freestylers, Olympic champion Emma McKeon
(Griffith University, QLD), world champion Mollie O’Callaghan (St Peters
Western, QLD) and four-time Olympian, former world champion and Tokyo bronze
medallist Cate Campbell start her road towards what she hopes will be a fifth
Olympic Games in Paris next year.
Campbell, at 30, has joined the
Swimming Australia Chandler Hub under Olympic gold medal coach Vince Raleigh –
a squad that includes Olympic gold medallist Zac Stubblety-Cook, two-time
Olympic relay medallist Leah Neale and Commonwealth Games gold medallist in the
200m butterfly, Lizzy Dekkers
An event that has the best depth of
any event in world swimming, will also see Campbell’s fellow Tokyo 4x100m
freestyle gold medallist Meg Harris (Marion, SA) joined by her gold medal
winning teammate Madi Wilson, Commonwealth Games gold medallist Shayna Jack (St
Peters Western, QLD), two-time Olympian and world relay champion Brianna
Throssell (St Peters Western) and Bond pair Mia O’Leary and Milla Jansen.
Missing will be triple Olympian
former world champion and Rio and Tokyo relay gold medallist Bronte Campbell
who has just announced her return to the pool for a Paris tilt.
Bronte will be guided and overseen by
Olympic gold medal winning coach Shannon Rollason at the NSW Swimming ACT Hub
in Canberrra – the man who coached Jodie Henry to 100m Olympic gold in Athens
in 2004.
Campbell will also spend time
training in the Sydney-based Cranbrook program with head coach Bec Wheatley and
overseen by Rollason.
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