Chellsie Memmel’s ankle injury was worse than anyone realized.
Memmel said after the U.S. women won the silver medal in team gymnastics Wednesday that she’d been competing with a broken bone in her right ankle. The 2005 world gymnastics champion hurt the ankle during training Aug. 4, but still competed on uneven bars in both the preliminaries and the team finals.
After missing much of the last two years with a devastating shoulder injury, Memmel became one of the feel-good stories of the summer when she finished behind reigning world champ Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin at both the national championships and Olympic trials. She missed the 2004 Olympics with a foot injury.
The Americans expected Memmel to appear on all four events during qualifying, but that became impossible after she hurt her ankle. She was still able to do uneven bars, though, because it doesn’t put much pressure on the ankle, and the Americans badly needed her score on the event. Memmel won the world title on bars in 2003, and has one of the most difficult routines in the world.
“I just had to believe in myself and know that I could do it,” she said. “That’s exactly what I did.”
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