Unfortunately, knee injuries can happen at any time during sport, and even in elite level Olympic athletes who have trained for years to be in the correct physical shape for their sports.

We have seen two competitors go out with knee injuries during the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Carolina Marin is a 3-time badminton world champion and 2016 Olympic gold medallist. She was leading her semi-final match against He Bing Jiao and suffered a severe knee injury and had to withdraw. Carolina was moving and jumped backwards to take an over head smash shot and in the process as she was landing, suffered a classic valgus and rotational injury to her right knee. This particular position puts a lot of excessive strain on the ACL and other ligaments around the knee such as the MCL. If the forces are too great then the ACL ruptures as in this case. This has been confirmed by Carolina’s team after an MRI scan. We wish her all the best for her future surgery and recovery.

Stevan Micic is the reigning freestyle wrestling world champion in the 57kg weight class, and was expected to challenge for the gold medal in Paris.

Wrestlers have very different load bearing biomechanics in their sport with very little jumping and landing movements involved but more grappling and strength moves that can cause rotational forces around the knee. Stevan is known to be carrying an ACL rupture but due to his muscle size and strength was able to compensate for the ACL deficiency to a degree. He felt that he didn’t want to take time out to have ACL reconstructive surgery as this would mean that he wouldn’t be able to recover in time to attend the Olympics. Sadly, his knee hasn’t been able to hold up to the challenges required and Stevan has pulled out of the competition. This is extremely sad and devastating for any athlete and we wish Stevan all the best and we look forward to seeing him back fully fit after surgery.

Find out more about Mr Bilal Barkatali.