How a missing broken ankle saved Carolyn Maxwell’s homecoming

Whistler (FIL/11 Nov 2024) Injuries are part and parcel of any sport and are normally seen as hinderances for athletes careers. For doctors or sports scientists to miss an injury during a season can cause a seismic negative impact. For Carolyn Maxwell though it was anything but.

The Canadian luge athlete’s first senior season on the international circuit was in 2018/19 but her memorable debut could have been postponed due to an injury she suffered just before her maiden World Cup.

“I didn't know it was broken until about two months later,” said Maxwell who broke her ankle a week and a half before travelling to Innsbruck, Austria. “I think any of the nerves that were there for the senior World Cup kind of dissipated really quickly after I broke my ankle.

“At that point then to me, it didn't really matter what I was racing, what I was doing, I just wanted to keep sliding so I guess in some sense it was almost a little blessing that happened.”

Had the concerned doctors found the break initially, undoubtedly Maxwell would have had to push her dreams of a senior season debut well back.

Although in discomfort, it was thankfully for the 24 year old not a career ender and she was still able to train and compete for most of the season.

It wasn’t until spring 2019 when Maxwell finally had her long-awaited operation on her ankle following another injury in the World Cup in Königssee which ended her season.

“I had a burn in my foot, so when I came home for that, that's when my physio was like ‘You're getting an MRI now’,” revealed Maxwell.

“The break finally did show in that and then just talking to the surgeon, they said it's pretty common that sometimes it can take up to a month for the break to show on the X-rays.

“I guess I got lucky in a sense that it didn't show initially because if it did, I probably wouldn't have had a season that year.”

In spite of an early end, Maxwell finished 23rd overall in her first senior World Cup, competing in five races, one of which was in Calgary, her hometown.

Not only is it the place where Maxwell was brought up but it also where she began her luge career after being inspired by family friend and Pyeongchang 2018 doubles silver medallist Justin Snith.

As commonly seen in luge, Maxwell’s best World Cup result came at her home track finishing 10th in Calgary with a time of 1:34.153.

She reached 124.13 km/h on the first run, the same speed as three time women’s singles Olympic gold medallist Natalie Geisenberger hit in the same race.

“Not only do you know the track, but you're comfortable there, you learn how to slide there, this is where I learn everything,” said Maxwell on how much home advantage helped. “That's where I had all my hard shifts in sliding. You have a lot of your successes here, but you also have all your learning curves here.

“At the time we didn't really have many races come to Calgary, so it was a really big opportunity for me.”

World Cups were irregularly held there, now there won’t be any for the foreseeable future as the old Calgary WinSport Luge track unfortunately closed during the Covid pandemic with team Canada since relocating over 900 kilometres west to Whistler in British Columbia.

Maxwell said that it “sucks” that she won’t be racing down her home track competitively again in the WinSport Canada Olympic Park, which was a group of winter sports venues purposely built for the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympic Games.

However, the Canadian is buoyant about her nation’s chances at their upcoming home World Championships in Whistler, the same track where she won women’s singles silver in the 2019 America-Pacific Championships.

“I think it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not many people are going to say they raced in a World Championship at home.

“We want to show what we have and have good performances but I think everyone also just wants to soak in the home crowd and really appreciate the moments that we have in it because a lot of the races we do are in Europe, so it's not often we're going to have these big races and have a bunch of people come out from Canada to watch.

“We’re still a really young team, but we want to show the world what's coming with our programme and all the work that we're putting in,” she added.

Maxwell regularly praises Calgary as a city and it will undoubtedly forever hold a special place in her heart. She can thank a circumvent ankle break that she was able to properly say goodbye.

But now Whistler is her sporting home, and the sheer volume of runs on the track like the rest of Luge Canada has boded well in the past.

It will have been 12 years since Canada hosted a World Championship and although Maxwell said she is taking the season “day by day”, she will be aiming to seize this “once in a lifetime opportunity”, hopefully this time with no handicap.