French Open: Joanna Konta reacts to third round win
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Taking to Twitter to announce she was stepping away from the sport, Konta said that she was able to have “lived her dreams”. During her career, the star quickly rose through the ranks, becoming number four in the world, but towards the end, health problems and setbacks started to occur. After initially dealing with her knee troubles, Konta soon couldn’t ignore the pain any longer, ending up with her pulling out of two Wimbledon warm-up events in Birmingham and Eastbourne last year.
In an interview with Sky Sports before her retirement, Konta addressed her injury. She said: “I think at the beginning I didn’t really acknowledge that there was something going on.
“It took way too long on my behalf to address it properly and by that time it was a significant thing.”
The tennis star explained that it was a tendon issue in her right knee that started to require constant attention that had devastated her chances of performing well in the Grand Slam tournament back in June 2021.
“Tendon issues, they’re not simple, they don’t follow any specific blueprint on rest, recovery, rehabilitation and then you’re back good to go, it’s basically just management,” she continued.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that. Knock on wood, I have been very lucky, I haven’t had any sort of injury which has needed surgery intervention or anything that has been very brutal that has properly kept me off court.”
At the time Konta remained hopeful that the injury would not severely affect her career, saying how she was determined to “kick it” before she stopped playing for good.
“It’s a managing thing,” she added. “I look to manage that I’m putting enough load through it, make sure all the muscles around it are strong enough, make sure I give it every opportunity to enable tendon repair, so I’m lifting very heavy – slow and heavy, that’s been the protocol for me with this tendon issue.
“Sometimes it is sore when I play matches, sometimes it isn’t. It depends where it is, how acute it is at the time.
“I don’t really look to expend any energy on fretting about it or worrying about it. I know I’m doing the work, I know I’m doing the best that I can.
“I’m giving myself every chance to be at my best when I step out onto the court.”
The health website Orthopaedic Specialists explain that tendons connect to muscle bones. They are made of strong, flexible bands of tissue that help your bones and joints to move when your muscles contract.
When tendons are injured, most affect areas near joints and when they affect the knee, it is often known as tendinopathy.
Tendinopathy occurs where tendons around the knee become painful and swollen, thus restricting movement. It is usually caused by overuse or repeated minor accidents.
However, once an individual has developed tendinopathy, it tends to be long-term and will require constant physiotherapy.
Orthoinfo explains that after sustaining any sort of knee injury, the first thing to do is to follow the RICE method. This involves doing the following:
- Rest
- Ice
- Gentle
- Compression
- Elevation.
Treatment from a medical professional will differ depending on several factors such as the severity of the injury, your age, general health and activity level. For someone as active as Konta, treatments probably involved immobilisation, physical therapy and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication, although she has made no comment on specific treatments she received.
Instead, when the star announced her retirement last last year, she wrote: “My playing career has come to an end, and I am so incredibly grateful for the career that it turned out to be.
“All the evidence pointed towards me not “making” it in this profession. However, my luck materialised in the people that came into my life and impacted my existence in ways that transcended tennis.
“I am so incredibly grateful for these people. You know who you are. Through my own resilience and through the guidance of others, I got to live my dreams. I got to become what I wanted and said as a child.
“How incredibly fortunate I count myself to be. How grateful I am.”
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