Kamila Sellier still can't train after her Olympic crash: "I don't want to live like this"

Poland's short track skater Kamila Sellier avoided the worst after her Olympic crash. But nine months on, she still can't skate, and she says even a walk with her dog can be hard.

What happened before?

During the women's 1500 m quarterfinal at the Winter Olympics, Sellier fell. The blade of American skater Kristen Griswold-Santos struck her in the face, just below her glasses. The cheekbone took the full force of the blow.

She was screened off from the crowd and carried out on a stretcher. Before she left, she raised a thumb to show fans she was conscious. She could have lost her sight, but that did not happen. She later had surgery to rebuild her eye socket.

How is she now?

In April, Sellier said she did not know when she could return to training, because of double vision. In August she briefly came back, but had to stop quickly.

She told TVP Sport it began with eye pain and constant headaches. She felt permanently tired and slept all the time between sessions. Her coordination suffered. After one camp she went out with her dog and had to turn back at once because she felt faint.

"I don't want to train like this, or live like this," she said.

Her sharpness of vision is good, she says. The problem appears when she looks up or down. She thinks the muscles of her left eye are not strong enough after the injury. Skaters must look upward all the time in their racing position, for an hour and a half to two hours a day. "It's like squinting non-stop," she explained. Until the double vision stops, she says, she cannot skate.

What's next?

She asked doctors whether things would improve with time. According to her, all of them said no. She now faces consultations with a strabologist (an eye muscle specialist), and another operation on the eye muscles may be needed. She wants to know how likely it is to help and what the risks of complications are.

Talking about the crash is harder now than right after it, she says, because she knows what it caused. "I know it will never be the way it was." She wants to race again very much, but, in her words, not at any cost.