After a very successful 2013 World Championships in Barcelona where she finished fifth in the 200 butterfly and sixth in both the 200 and 400 IM Hungarian Zsuzsanna Jakabos returned to training after a break from the pool to familiar shoulder pain that she had been dealing with for the last few years. It came to a point in fall where she was unable to pick up a glass of water without pain.
In October in consultation with her coach, Ivan Petrov, Jakabos decided to undergo a surgical procedure on October 18th to attempt to repair her shoulder, “The cause of the inflammation was a small lesions in Jakabos’ right shoulder that made the surgery unavoidable” Petov told hungarianambiance.com.
“She will certainly go through a slow recovery process, but at least, we can be sure that she will completely recover.”
In November Jakabos told the same publication that her road back to competition was going to be a long one, “The full recovery will take five months, according to my doctor,” said Jakabos.
“In the spring I want to get back to the normal training schedule, to be able to compete the summer, which won’t be an easy task to accomplish under such a short period of time. I will have to start everything from scratch, I must re-learn how to swim, which can change even my techniques.”
The surgery forced her to miss out on the opportunity to compete in the final World Cup competitions and the European Short Course Championships in Herning, something she said, in an interview with the Hungarian Swimming Federation, was a necessary sacrifice.
Jakabos also gave an update on her progress, “It was strange , because I missed so much in my life, it (swimming) has been part of my life since I was a small child. I had to re- learn the water and the enforced rest was an unpleasant side effect of the deterioration of muscles . Recently I have been working on the arm, of course I am still far from being full-fledged work in this field.”
Currently Jakabos is swimming approximately 3000 meters in her training sessions and it appears that her recovery is moving in a positive direction.
Not concerned a bit. Zsu is a great competitor but an even better person. She’ll be great in Rio