Stephanie Rice ready to defend her IM events at the 2012 London Olympics – Swimming News
Triple Olympic champion, Stephanie Rice has almost completely recovered from her shoulder surgery and she is ready to defend her titles of the 200m and 200m Individual Medley (IM) at the forthcoming 2012 London Olympic Games.
Rice, who won gold medals of the 200m IM, 400m IM and 4*200m freestyle at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, dominated both IM events at the Australian Selection Trials.
The 23-year-old Rice suffered a shoulder injury in 2011, for which she had to undergo a surgery. Her training session was halted due to the surgery and she was concerned about her recovery before the Olympic trials.
Fortunately, she got a little time to train and with a little training, she faced no trouble in securing national gold medals of the discipline.
Rice is quite happy with her recent accomplishments and articulated that she is doing all she can to defend her Olympic titles.
“It was 12 weeks out from trials and my shoulder had been really sore for two weeks. I got it scanned and was told I'd torn a tendon. I said to my physio, what does it mean, rest for a session or two, pull back on training. When he told me I needed surgery
I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'you know what, I can't change it, this is the journey you have to go along and you have to handle it as best as you can,” said Rice.
On the other hand, Rice expressed contentment over her performance just after recovering from the shoulder surgery and said that she is very happy. She also added that she will try to impress her fans in her exclusive events at the London Games but if she
loses her events, she would have no regrets.
The 2012 London Games are almost two months away and Rice is expected to face tough competition from Great Britain’s Hannah Miley and Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu as they have occupied the top fastest spots in the 2012 early world rankings.
Currently, Rice is third fastest in the 400m IM and fastest in the 200m discipline and it would be interesting to see how she performs at the biggest stage of sports.
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