The conditioning coach of the Turkish national running team, Nikola Borić, asked me to take a look at the X-ray images of his athlete Elvan, who had hit her left knee two weeks earlier while stepping out of a car. Since then, she had visibly altered her running movement, and as a result, her performance had worsened. She increasingly complained of pain in her right leg and on the right side of her pelvis. The coach also wrote that he had the impression that during running, her left leg was lagging behind. They also sent me a photograph, and from her body posture it was clear that she was leaning to the right; her spine was excessively curved, her torso tight, which caused her to sway while running, likely leading to stress fractures—fatigue-induced microfractures—in her right leg. (The X-rays showed cracks on her right femur, which, according to a radiologist from Istanbul, were the result of running, and I myself saw how excessively she was straining her right leg—over a 42 km run, such micro-injuries are bound to occur.)

It was by no means either intentional or accidental that on that day I ended up with my athlete at a longtime friend’s place. It was once again one of those days of frustration, helplessness, and despair, as it had been during the last three months of intensive treatments: massages, magnets, electrostimulation, physical therapy, and who knows what else in the most expensive hospitals in Istanbul, with the best specialists and doctors. The diagnosis was fluid buildup around the bone due to an injury six months earlier; the pain “wandered” from the knee all the way to the pelvis. My athlete was unable to sit, drive a car, or walk, and we could not even think about training. This was followed by three months of treatment with anti-rheumatic injections, accompanied by headaches; the possibility of surgery was indicated if the treatment did not help. I was afraid of losing the season and the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro two years away.