{"id":356298,"date":"2023-12-29T20:17:58","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T21:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=356298"},"modified":"2023-12-29T23:03:33","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T23:03:33","slug":"how-aussie-found-closure-after-near-death-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=356298","title":{"rendered":"How Aussie found 'closure' after near-death horror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toughened by a death-defying experience and spurred on by a forgettable result on the world stage, Australian hurdler Sarah Carli is approaching the Olympic<\/a> year with a newfound focus.<\/p>\n

Two years after a gym accident and a seizure led to \ufeffemergency surgery on her neck<\/a>, the 400m hurdler from Wollongong ran a personal best in Finland in June, clocking 54.66 seconds. She describes that moment in Turku as "the final piece of closure" in her comeback.<\/p>\n

But\ufeff at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest two months later, Carli was eliminated in the heats. It wasn't a case of being bundled out despite running a cracking time; her time was more than a second outside her personal best, so the search for positives was difficult.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> What 'on edge' star must do to save Test average<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: \ufeff<\/strong>Young star shines in near-record Aussie run chase<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\ufeff<\/strong> WAFL player killed in accident on European holiday<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

"Since coming back to Australia I've been more focused and more determined than I think I ever have been, so it may have been a blessing to come home upset," Carli tells Wide World of Sports at Sydney Olympic Park.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffThere was a lot of growth out of this season. I ran a personal best, which was something that I had been striving for, and it was a really big closure piece for me, but then to underperform at the World Championships, it was two ends of the spectrum in one season."<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At a Wollongong gym in February 2021, Carli went to complete another routine rep when she tried to step up onto a box with a bar\ufeff on her back. She slipped, fell forward, smashed her head on the box and split open her chin. The bar landed on her neck.<\/p>\n

She was rushed to hospital, but after a series of checks was cleared to go home.<\/p>\n

A seizure changed everything.<\/p>\n

A scan discovered a traumatic carotid artery dissection, which in basic terms means one of the arteries responsible for carrying blood to her brain had suffered a tear. She could have had a stroke, or even died.<\/p>\n

Even the emergency surgery risked leaving Carli, 26 at the time, with permanent brain damage.<\/p>\n

In the days that followed her hospital discharge, a lengthy blood-stained scar on her neck was a graphic indication of the horror she'd overcome, as was an inability to walk the length of her driveway.<\/p>\n

\ufeffJust five months later, she was charging around the track in Tokyo on her Olympic debut.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

"The mental aspect was probably the hardest part [of the recovery from the accident]. I had to learn a lot about myself and how to control really intense emotions. There was so much anger and frustration and sometimes even self-pity, which I had never really experienced before," Carli says.<\/p>\n

"So working through those emotions and learning a lot about myself was really hard at the time, but … when you get put in that position you just get through and you come out the other end, which is what I've done."<\/p>\n

She couldn't walk the length of her driveway for a week because her heart rate would rocket and force her to stop.\ufeff<\/p>\n

"I'm such an active person and … it was really insane to not be able to walk down my driveway without feeling like I was going to faint. That's a really scary feeling when you can usually just go for a run around the track without even blinking," Carli says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

"I medically had my driver's licence taken off me. Even a simple task like going and getting milk and not being able to do that because I couldn't walk and I couldn't drive \u2014 I was so dependent on other people."<\/p>\n

There was no chance of Carli's underwhelming result at the World Championships leaving her broken; if she could overcome a traumatic carotid artery dissection and the complications that followed, she could overcome the disappointment of Budapest.<\/p>\n

"I was really devastated with [my performance in] Budapest. I hadn't ever underperformed at a major championships before, so that was the first I've really experienced that. It's the underperformance that upset me, it's the fact that I didn't compete how I knew I was capable of," Carli says.<\/p>\n

"I think sometimes when you run a personal best you get that really inflated feeling that you're kind of invincible, and sometimes it's a good thing to get knocked back down and go, 'OK, you have to keep working, you can't just rest on what you've already done, you have to keep pushing'."<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Carli juggles her elite hurdling career with part-time work as a financial advisor at a firm in Wollongong.<\/p>\n

As she recharges over a two-week break over the Christmas and New Year period, she's reflecting on her brilliant run in Finland, where she chopped 0.44 of a second from her personal best. Stopping the clock at 54.66 made her the third-fastest Australian woman in 400m hurdles history, behind\ufeff Olympic gold medallist Debbie Flintoff-King (53.17) and two-time world champion Jana Pittman (53.22).<\/p>\n

"\ufeffI came off the last hurdle and … I had so much in the back end and I think I knew, given how close I was to a lot of the other European girls, that the time was going to be fast," Carli says with a sense of beaming pride.<\/p>\n

"There was that initial kind of shock and excitement and adrenaline, but it was really weird because no one was there; my family wasn't there, my coach [Melissa Smith] wasn't there and my manager JT [James Templeton] wasn't there. So it was really weird to have this huge experience and then all the people that have been there weren't able to share it with me … There was this massive high and then [me thinking], 'Oh, it's just me here', which I guess is also probably a really nice thing, too.<\/p>\n

"I'm incredibly proud [of that run] … I guess to know in myself that I was going to be able to make it back [was great]. So that personal best in Finland meant everything to me and it was really important that I was able to do that."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toughened by a death-defying experience and spurred on by a forgettable result on the world stage, Australian hurdler Sarah Carli is approaching the Olympic year […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":356237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356298"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356302,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356298\/revisions\/356302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/356237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}