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TORONTO (CP) - Freestyle skier Deidra Dionne's comeback to compete at the Turin Games was one of Canada's most inspirational stories at the 2006 Olympics.
It was a mere five months earlier that she had broken her neck in a frightening fall while training for a World Cup aerials event in Australia, an injury that required seven hours of surgery, grafted bone from her hip, a titanium plate and screws to repair.
A bronze medallist at the 2002 Olympics, Dionne did nothing but walk for the next three months before she was allowed to resume training. Against the odds she made it back for the Games, where she finished 22nd of 23 competitors in the women's aerials.
"I'm so happy I did it," Dionne said Tuesday while in Toronto to help promote the 2007 Canada Winter Games. "There was never a doubt in my mind."
But rushing back for the Olympics caught up with her and that's why she plans to take the 2006 season off to rest and rehabilitate. The 24-year-old's goal now is to be peaking for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
"I've been advised that I should take my time coming back and I really want to make sure that I'm 100 per cent in Vancouver," she said. "I'm going to work in the gym and on the trampoline and all sorts of different things so I'm ready in four years."
While her neck was strong in Turin, the other muscles around it were not. The rest of her body wasn't ready for the impact of hurtling through the air at high speeds before landing on unforgiving snow. Her back ached and she was sore all over compensating for it.
"I knew I was skipping steps and that I'd have to come back and do them," said Dionne. "The impact of aerials was too much without building the strength back. I didn't have too much of a chance to do that before the Olympics and it was hard on my body. Now I'm just going to go back and make sure I'm strong enough to take the impact."
To that end, the native of Red Deer, Alta., is now based in Kelowna, B.C., where she's working with a strength and trampoline coach.
"We're basically starting from zero," Dionne said. "We're rebuilding my body and working from the inside out so I'm never in a position where I'm capable of injuring myself the way I did this time around."
Dionne is also using the break in competition to finish her bachelor of arts degree at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus.
"I think it's actually a really positive thing," she said of the time off. "I've been on tour since I was 17 years old and I'm 24 now, so it's time to kind of take a step back and work the small things all the way to peak in four years from now."
Like many Canadian athletes, competing at home in Vancouver is a big motivator. It could be her swan song so she wants to be at her best.
"I think it will be a huge trend for athletes," Dionne said. "That will be close to the end of my career if not the end of my career and I want to make it special. I want to be in a position where I can win and this is the first step to that."
© The Canadian Press, 2006
