The reigning Olympic champion Sanne Wevers came back to competition last week at the Heerenveen Friendly which served as the last trial for the Worlds team selection. Wevers achieved good scores on both bars and beam, even though she’s not yet back to her full difficulty. She got injured last year and the injury affected her whole right side of the body, yet the doctors were not able to figure out what exactly was wrong. Wevers talked to Volkskrant.nl about trying to recover from the injury and battling a newfound fear of beam:
“What was a big issue, that I’ve never known before, was fear on the beam. Since I got the right side of my body injured, I do have this fear. That’s completely new to me – that you have to stand there and get over the fear, that I have to trust that my leg is working again”.
Wevers said that in the past ten months, she often could not predict whether her body would work the way she wanted it too, as her right leg would betray her at unexpected moments and this sometimes caused falls off the beam. She got a lot of help from her twin sister Lieke, her father and coach Vincent, and the entire Dutch national team:
“But in the end, you have to cross the threshold yourself”.
The hard part of the whole situation was that she decided that her body just didn’t want what she wanted anymore, after the fall in the beam final in Qatar. It was described as a problem with her right hip. She took nine weeks of active rest, she went swimming often, but the problem was not resolved. Wevers tried finding an answer and consulted with multiple doctors. It is still not clear what exactly her injury is. She had small hernias, but she knew about those since 2015 and those are under control. At the end, she decided to go back to training on the apparatuses very carefully. She is frustrated with the lack of a definitive diagnosis:
“There were some little things that came out of all the procedures, but to say “This is the cause of the whole problem on the right side of your body” – that’s not there. I still can’t say: this is the diagnosis.”
While she’s been competing for quite a long time, she doesn’t yet plan to retire:
“I do think competing at the top level for ten years has a cost. But the medics didn’t say anything about that. Personally, I look forward in a positive way. We are in control and do everything in our power to keep it good. But that’s competing at competing at the elite level. Always balancing on the border.”
She got 13.333 on beam at the competition, with the 5.2 difficulty. She potentially plans to upgrade it to 6.4 next year with all the connections counted, but for now, she’s taking things slowly:
“This beam routine is a strategic choice for the team result in Stuttgart. But it’s not the routine I have in mind for next year.”
She also gave an interview to Nos.nl after the meet, talking about the Dutch team trying to repeat history and qualify to the Olympics again.
A: I am actually quite happy with my first competition. I am content.
Q: But there’s a lot at stake, right?
A: Yeah, that as well, but in the end I think I also managed to make it small and see it as the first step back. That went well today. I think I stuck to my task and for now it was a good first step.
[My injury] is the whole right side of my body. We can’t really find the exact cause. I think there are several things that play into it. And of course there were some little things that came out of the procedures, but not that you think: ok this is it.
Q: Are you ready for the World Championships?
A: Well, I am very happy with how the process is going now. Two weeks ago I was here [at the trial] as well but I wasn’t competing. If I look at two weeks ago, I think it was a good choice because I just really wasn’t ready then. And now I had at least a shot at succeeding when I started. I think it worked out well today. The team is the first priority now. The whole beam exercise has been built for the team. There are a couple of elements that I can’t fully do because of my hip yet. Those have been taken out and we’ve still managed to get the D-score as high as possible. And today I showed that I am somewhat consistent and I’m somewhat capable of making sure there’s a safe routine there. And then I’m going to keep building up my routine for next year.
Sanne Wevers made the Worlds team along with her sister Lieke, Eythora Thorsdottir, Naomi Visser, Vera van Pol, and Tisha Volleman.
The national team coach, Gerben Wiersma, said choosing the team was not an easy task as the Dutch program has some depth now, but he feels good about the selected team:
“Very good! There’s still some potential to score higher. In the details, there are a couple of tenths we could get. But I think the most important thing is that the overall fitness is just very good right now. That’s great. On one hand, [choosing the team] sounds hard, but on the other hand I’m very conscious of the fact that it’s very good that I have to make choices, because I also experienced a moment where there was no one left to choose from – in a small country like the Netherlands. That’s definitely not the case right now.”
Translation from Dutch by Kim.
