Lucas Punkari
A freak injury to his left ankle suffered at the Thunder Bay May Invitational nearly derailed Donovan Taylor’s chances of going to Baltimore this weekend for the North Baltimore Aquatic Club Long Course Invitational.
But it’s all systems go for the 16-year-old swimmer as he flies out to Maryland today.
“It’s still a little bit tender but I should be good to go for Baltimore,” Taylor said during a practice session last week.
Taylor suffered the injury May 28 when he slipped off the top of the podium during a medal presentation at the Thunder Bay meet.
“I was just going up on the podium like I had done thousands of times before, but I had forgotten just how slippery the podiums are there because they are flat and everyone else had been up there already,” he explained.
“I went up there with my one foot and it just slid forward, and I ended up going into the banner on the back side of the podium.
“A few people have told me that there’s a clip of what happened on YouTube now, which I’m not too thrilled about,” he smirked.
Taylor said he didn’t feel any pain at first as he was just embarrassed over what had happened. But once he went into the pool for warm-ups the following morning, he immediately could tell something was wrong.
“[When] I hopped into the pool the next day, I was having some trouble pushing off of the walls and the pain was shooting through my ankle,” he recalled.
“At that point, we decided to scratch out of the 200m butterfly event because that would just damage and hurt the ankle even more then it already was.”
Then after posting fast times in the preliminary heats for the boys’ 15-and-over 200m I.M., 100m breaststroke, and the 100m freestyle events, Taylor was taken to a Thunder Bay hospital by Susan Hay, a mother of one the swimmer’s on the host Thunderbolts team who also worked there.
“We went down to the physiotherapy area and I had an ultra-sound done on my ankle, along with some acupuncture,” Taylor noted.
“She did a really good job with that, and my ankle was feeling good and strong by the time I arrived back at the pool,” he added.
Since event rules don’t allow anyone to be taped up when they go into the water, the Aquanaut had to remove the tape from his left ankle once he entered the pool for warm-ups, which then proved to be the end of his day.
“I think being taped up gave me a false sense of security,” Taylor admitted.
“As soon as I took the tape off and I started pushing off of the walls, my ankle started to get sore again
“It was as that point me and [Aquanauts’ head coach] Dawnn [Taylor] decided that, ‘You know what, it’s more important to just rest and heal it up than to make things worse,’” he added.
Until his podium mishap, things had been going well for Taylor at the May Invitational, capturing first place in the 100m fly, 200m breast, and the 100m back finals.
“Those were three pretty good races,” he said.
“I was a little bit disappointed at first with my time in the 100 fly [1:00.26] as I wanted to break the minute [mark].
“But I kind of knew that I was still really tired after the meet in Halifax the weekend before, so that was probably going to be out of my reach,” he reasoned.
Taylor had been in Halifax to compete at the Eastern Canadian Tri Meet, where the Fort Frances native earned six medals to help Team Ontario to the overall victory.
“We were all feeling the burn when it came to competition day on the Saturday after all of the training beforehand,” Taylor noted.
“I picked up some really nice drills out from there, especially with cardio work, which I’m going to start throwing into my workout routines over the next little while,” he remarked.
When Taylor hits the pool in Baltimore for three-straight days of competition starting this Saturday, his main goal is to make into the finals of the 200m I.M., as well as the 100m and 200m fly events.
“I want to compete against the big guys from that region so badly,” Taylor enthused.
“I’m pretty much one of those adrenaline junkies that once my eyes lock onto another swimmer, it’s pretty much war.
“I also want to pull out some really good times there,” he added. “But I just want to make sure that I have some fun while I’m there, and also get a lot out of the experience.”
