Word: benoit
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Joan Benoit, just being in the marathon constitutes a triumph. Less than three weeks before the May trials, the women's world-record holder from Maine underwent arthroscopic surgery on her complaining right knee, which finally shut down completely in practice. With microscissors, the doctor snipped a tight bundle of inflamed tissue from just behind the joint on the outside of the knee. "You could hear it snap," he said. "It was like cutting a rubber band...
...next day a special exercise cycle was rigged over Benoit's hospital bed, and she began pedaling with her hands to keep her cardiovascular system in fettle. After four days she resumed running, just a mile at first. Next she swam, rode a bike, lifted weights. With a time of 2:31:04, eight minutes slower than her 1983 Boston Marathon record, she won the trial, finishing in tears. Says Bob Sevene, her coach mostly in the sense of someone to lean on: "Joan has this tremendous ability to blank out everything at the start of a race-heat...
...speed plateau. She is able to run faster than ever, but her hamstrings can't take the strain." Kaminoff treated the Injury with an Electro-Acuscope, a mysterious contraption related to Eastern acupuncture used by Sports Sociologist Jack Scott in reviving Joan Benoit before her victory in the marathon trial. Encased in tights, Ashford had to pull up in her 200 qualifying heat after 70 meters. An alternative favorite, Chandra Cheeseborough, also dropped out (to rest a pulled hamstring), leaving first in the final to Valerie Briscoe-Hooks. Cheeseborough earlier ran a U.S.-record 400 (49.28), and expects...
When the pain persisted, Benoit flew to Eugene, Ore., to consult her coach, Bob Sevene. Conventional treatment-rest, anti-inflammatory drugs, cortisone injections-did not help. So last Wednesday, she underwent arthroscopic surgery in Eugene for the removal of an inflamed plica, a soft, penny-size piece of tissue underneath the knee. When damaged by the kind of stress placed on it by distance runners, the plica thickens, interfering with the tendons in the knee and causing considerable pain. Now the question is how soon she will be ready to run again...
...There's no doubt about it. She's lost fitness," notes Sevene. But engineers quickly rigged a special bicycle that she can pedal with her hands even while she is still in bed. The coach hopes that Benoit will begin running this week and get in three 14-mile runs before the women's Olympic trials at the end of next week. Says Sevene: "The doctors say it's going to be tight. But if she can pull it off, it's a hell of a story." -By Richard Stengel. Reported by Steven Holmes/Los Angeles