Road to Recovery

Injury update with Belgian maestro Steven Van Broeckoven

Steven Van Broeckhoven (JP / NeilPryde) finished the 2014 season as the PWA Freestyle Vice-World Champion - narrowly missing out on a second world title to Jose ‘Gollito’ Estredo (Fanatic / North / MFC). However, whilst training during the beginning of the off season, disaster struck for the Belgian maestro as he suffered an injury. We caught up with him to find out exactly what he has done and how long he is anticipating to be off the water for.

PWA: You were training in Tarifa, right? How long were you out there and how were the conditions?

SVB: “Yes I was in Tarifa after the EFPT in France. I planned to drive down the south of Europe and find some wind. I really like to go down to Tarifa as there are a lot of different spots and with the van you are free to go where you want. I also had my slalom equipment, SUP and MTB there so enough things to do. In the first week conditions were not so great - I had some light wind freestyle and slalom days together with a few days of no wind, but good waves for SUP, but we had also pretty hardcore onshore Sylt conditions which is really challenging. For the 2nd week forecast was good they give Levante for whole week. But my accident happened on the first day of Levante and that was the end of the trip unfortunately.”

PWA: How did you injure yourself and what's the diagnosis?

SVB: “I was sailing in Balenario, I wanted to hit the wave for a ponch, but I was late as I had to sail in between the 2 rocks to reach the wave, but the wave was faster than expected, so I hit the wave at full speed and landed hard behind… My knee hurt a lot and the kneecap was completely on the side of my knee, at that moment I thought my leg was out of my upper leg, it really looked like that so I thought the only way to make it back to beach was pushing it back in place, so I did that straight away. Was hard to make it back on the beach, luckily some people on the beach help me as I couldn’t walk. Once back on the beach I head straight for the Hospital in Algaciras, they told me everything is fine just rest 3 weeks with leg up and 3x a day  ibuprofen 600g. I didn’t trust this, so I flew back to Belgium, there the diagnosis was that my Medial ligament is damaged. The specialist told me it takes 6 weeks to heal, and somehow there is nothing else damaged.”

PWA: How long until you are back windsurfing?

SVB: “6weeks, I've now been off the water for almost 4 weeks and I'm feeling good already, but I will wait until my Osteopath gives the green light. I don’t want to try and rush back and set myself back.”

PWA: How are you finding it being off the water?

SVB: “It’s not too bad, time is going fast as I'm training hard everyday, to get back in shape, I feel now already stronger than before, but it's really important that the muscles around knee are strong and the reflex is back to full reaction.”

PWA: Good luck with the rest of the recovery - What’s your plan when you are ready to get back on the water? 

SVB: “I’m going to Cape Town from the 14th January, where I’ll continue my winter training in preparation for next year.”

PWA: Thanks and hope you're back on the water soon!

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