Shane Rose is on the mend and ‘continues to improve daily’ one week after a serious fall during a cross country training session.
Shane is still in hospital and expected to stay there for several more days following operations to repair his broken femur, fractured pelvis and fractured elbow. It is expected that he will be on bed rest for a month or so before beginning rehabilitation.
Despite that, Shane and his team are still optimistic that the accident will not prevent him from competing at Paris 2024, with his social media saying that “Shane and Virgil are qualified and hopeful that Shane will be able to return to the saddle, prove his fitness and gain selection as a part of the Australian Eventing team.”
It would not be the first time that Shane has returned from injury to take part at an Olympic Games – in 2015, he was out for several months with a punctured lung, damaged liver and several broken ribs which took him quite some time to recover from (much to his surprise as he told us in this interview). He went on to win team bronze at Rio 2016, although he obviously had a much longer recovery period than he currently has with just four months to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
He also has two team silver medals (Beijing 2008 and Tokyo 2020) but would dearly love to win gold and other past experiences shows that broken bones do not stop Australian Olympians. Wendy Schaeffer won eventing team gold and was the highest placed individual at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games just nine weeks after breaking her leg in two places.
Go, Shane!
