Saint John Times Globe - Wednesday, October 21, 1998

A champion rower from Rothesay who holds a seat on Canada's Olympic-bound four-man crew learns he needs surgery that threatens his career

By ED WINCHESTER

Special to the Times Globe

A sunglass-clad Ed Winchester trains in Switzerland this summer, before injuring his back.

This MRI image shows Ed Winchester's injured disc.

Sometime around 10:30 tomorrow morning, I'm going to be wheeled into an operating room at St. Joseph's Hospital, given a general anesthetic ... and become unhinged.

Literally.

A small vertical incision will be made in my lower back. Surgeon Dr. Ed Abraham will peel away the fibrous muscle in the way of vertebra L4 to remove a herniated disc.

The MRI revealed a second herniated disc right below, at L5, but it's the large protrusion at L4 that has to be removed if I'm to have any hope at all of making it back to Canada's National Rowing Team in time for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

The disc looks like an Oreo Cookie with the cream filling squeezed out into a balloon shape. The balloon bulges out and puts pressure on my nerves.

I experience symptoms seemingly at odds with each other.

I have shooting pain down my right leg and numbness in the top of my foot. Sitting down is painful. Righting myself afterwards takes a few cumbersome minutes. At 27 years old, I couldn't get over to tie my shoes if I tried. Bending forward is impossible. That's why I can't get back into a boat.

The surgery is routine for spine specialists, I've been told. And full recovery is almost ensured. People return to digging ditches afterwards. Pro hockey players can still take punishing hits. The doctor says that in two months, I'll be able to do anything a normal person can do.

But I'm a rower.

Biomechanically , disc problems are a rower's Achilles' heel. With every stroke, the lower back takes a tremendous load, acting as a hinge between the explosive leg drive and the reflex lock-on of the arms.

Dr. Richard Backus, Rowing Canada's team doctor, spelled out what's in store for me. It sounds straightforward. The disc will be removed, scar tissue left behind.

The sobering thing - the challenge - is that no rower in Canada or the U. S. has ever made it back to their national team after this operation. The risks are huge, but I'm past the halfway point to competing at the Olympics. There's no choice.

See? Unhinged.

I first knew I'd done some serious damage in late August, on the flight over to Germany for the World Rowing Championships.

One day earlier, during the last practice at the National Training Centre in London, Ont., I'd felt unusually weak. The guys wanted me to stop early, but I thought this last practice before leaving the country was important. I wanted to give it my all.

I felt an innocuous twinge in my right side as we began speed-work against the heavyweight men's eight. For four lightweights, we were moving the boat well, keeping to within a boat length or so over the set distance.

On the last stroke of the second-to-last race of the workout, I felt something give. I seized up at the pain - a short, sharp jab, like a pen- knife stab. There was also something visual. White sparks in the corners of my eyes.

"That's it, guys, I can't row anymore," I groaned, and my three crewmates rowed the boat the two kilometers back to the dock.

Our crew was the expected medal- hopefuls who were leading the Canadian contingent overseas the next day. That workout was the last time we went fast.

I broke the news to the team physiotherapist aboard Air Canada Flight 872 bound for Frankfurt. I was in serious pain, but only my crewmates knew. I didn't know the physio well because I'd been healthy since she joined the team. As I introduced myself, and began to explain, she saw my distress.

"Oh my God, you're listing," she said.

And I was, to the left, as my torso compensated for the lower back trauma by twisting itself in an S- shape away from the inflammation.

Immediately, she ordered me to the back of the plane. I raised eye-brows as I stretched out, belly on the floor, to extend my back.

In Germany, around-the-clock medical attention kept me away from the race course for five days. I missed valuable practice time.

What followed was a try-anything parade of therapy. The doctors were throwing solutions at me like cooks toss spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. I slept on the hard surface of a physio table. I had spindly needles jabbed into my posterior to try to release the muscles protecting the disc. I was strapped belly-down on a table as Volker Nolte, my coach, reefed on my legs, with me trying to lift my upper body off the table with a tricep press. That went on nearly every hour for two days.

The ultrasound and anti-inflammatory combination didn't do much. Neither did the Naproxin. I tried icing it, then heating.

But after five days, the pain eventually calmed down enough for me to touch my toes. Then I was allowed to do some work on a bike. Volker and a spare took turns subbing for me on the water.

In the end, I got the green light to race, but we flat-out sucked: 11th out of 19.

After two solid years and two World Championship medals under our belts, the program is still reeling from that disappointment. We were supposed to be the ones to set the tone heading into the Olympics.

From all the data we'd collected, I would have predicted no worse than a third-place finish. But somehow we had lost about five seconds - a second per 500 metres maybe - and that's just too much to give up in international racing.

The worst part was that the abysmal performance and my back problem were a mystery.

Until the MRI results.

There's a lot at stake with this surgery and I've spent countless hours imagining the possible scenarios.

But the only one, I'll accept is being able to pull again for the national team.

I've been a rower for 12 years. For the past four seasons, it's pretty much been a full-time gig. So, I'm stunted a bit when it comes to a career. I survive on a meagre $480-a-month Sport Canada allowance that isn't enough to live on, and the support of my family. But I'd pay to be able to race again.

I'm addicted to the sport and the scene. I've grown to crave the isolation of winter training and I live for the energy of the National Training Centre in London, Ont. And it's one of the few things in life that you can count on to get back more than what you put in.

I know I can't compete forever, although I'm still considered young for the sport. But without a shot at the Olympics, there will be no closure to all of this. If I'm healthy, I know I can con- tribute to the team. The surgery will at least give me a shot at it. And it's the last chance I have to avoid the looming identity crisis of reliving my glory days like a character in a Bruce Springsteen song.

I've kept in touch with my coach, Volker, since the world championships.

As a young, idealistic rower from West Germany, his dreams of going to the 1976 Montreal Olympics ended with a knee injury.

So, I've been on the receiving end of some pretty potent doses of sports psychology lately from someone who's been through this. Rhetoric or not, I appreciate hearing that I'll be a stronger rower, and - imagine this - a better person if I come back from this.

He tends to spread the cheese on a little thick, but that's Volker.

Still, if I could pinpoint a turning point in this mess, it came in my last conversation with him. My teammates were off to Boston for a race against our American rivals, and he'd just chosen a spare to take my place.

We all have optimal windows to complete things in life, he said, like completing your education. Like having a family. When they pass, things get complicated.

And he reminded me that the window of time athletes have to become Olympic champions is small.

There's a time to turn all your efforts over to rowing - to struggle with technique, to improve fitness, to overcome mental and physical limitations, to learn the art of fighting and making it look easy.

All to be the best in the world for a short, brilliant moment. Windows of opportunity like these don't come too often in life, he said.

And he told me my window is still open.