A sporting comeback and a knee with a name

Asha Philip has an unusual friend. His name is Bertram. He lives in her right knee. She’ll happily point out the scar that houses him if you ask. Because he has helped Asha find something she thought had been stolen from her forever – the ability to run like the wind. For this morning Asha qualified for the next round of the 60m at the 2012 World Indoor Athletics Championships.

Four years ago Asha was at a crossroads in her career. In 2007 she became the first British woman to win a 100m gold medal, at the World Youth Championships. At the time she was also world trampoline champion. She decided to concentrate on sprinting, but a few months later promised herself a final hoorah in her other event.

The crossroads became a car crash. Asha shattered her knee after a heavy fall. She fell into a depression and has only just made it back onto the international track scene. And she could not have done it without her new pal.

Bertram is a replacement anterior cruciate ligament Asha inherited from a cadaver. She doesn’t know the donor’s real name, but wanted the gift that saved her career to be more than just a piece of flesh. It needed a name. So one of her medical team called it “Bertram”.

I do not know if I speak for others but I enjoy watching top level sport because I see in elite athletes’ traits that I would like to possess myself. This I accept is deeply narcissistic, for my commuting to work five days a week is but a patch on the dedication required to cut it on the track. Nonetheless I enjoy celebrating their highs, and commiserate with their lows. But very rarely do I feel like I genuinely understand what a top athlete has had to overcome to achieve.

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Twenty years ago this summer I shattered my knee playing (poor quality) football. It was rebuilt, but two years later my anterior cruciate ligament snapped again.

I had to accept long ago that this dodgy knee of mine would never be quite the same. It was rough. Most schoolboys indulge a dream however fantastical of one day representing your country. It’s not nice realising it is absolutely now not gonna happen – even if it really never was.

Nonetheless I was lucky enough the second time I destroyed my would-be England career to be seen by one of the country’s best sports surgeons. There was no cadaver rescue for me. My ligament was fixed with a slice of my own hamstring. My knee is just my knee. And after another series of operations it might hurt a bit, but it’s now as strong as an Ox.

So it was nice to discover that Asha’s knee – the one now propelling her in style against the best of the rest of the world – had been fixed by the very same doctor.
I might not ever have been able to run 60m in 7.37 seconds, even if sometimes I still allow myself to imagine what it must be like. But meeting Asha – and Bertram – made me realise it is sometimes possible to share something – however tenuous – with top athletes after all.