CNN – In the run up to the Paris Olympics, athletes have been stepping up their preparations in order to maintain their edge over competitors.
But for Australia’s Matt Dawson, those preparations looked a little different this year, with the field hockey player opting to have part of his finger amputated in order to compete in the Games.
The 30-year-old Dawson injured the ring finger of his right hand after being struck by a hockey stick in a practice match just two weeks before he was due to represent the Kookaburras in Paris in what would be his third Olympic appearance.
The impact left the top of his finger almost entirely severed and had his Olympic dreams hanging in the balance.
“It was pretty significant the injury to the finger. When people around you – when they see it and don’t say anything – you obviously know, it’s pretty bad,” he explains to CNN Sport from Paris ahead of the Games kicking off.
“Things got moving pretty quickly. And all I remember someone saying was, ‘We need to see a plastic surgeon.’”
The impact on his finger was so great that “the surgeon said it was very lucky still to be hanging on,” he adds.
The two-time Olympian was given two options: surgeons could attempt to reconstruct his finger by putting a wire in it, which meant four to six months of rest to fully recover and missing out on the Olympics – or they could remove the affected part of the finger.
Dawson, who was part of a silver medal-winning national team at Tokyo 2020, opted for the latter and amputated the affected part of his finger to ensure he could still get another shot at Olympic glory …
