INDIANAPOLIS, October 8. IN a surprise announcement at 7:20 this evening, superstar Michael Phelps withdrew from the remaining three days of competition at the 7th FINA Short Course World Swimming Championships in Indianapolis. The reason: a worrisome, but unspecified back injury.<\/p>\n
Phelps won the 200-meter freestyle last night in 1:43.59. He withdrew from the 400 IM this morning without explanation but said he would swim in the 4x200m free relay tonight. However, he was not listed on the heat sheets this evening.<\/p>\n
At a hastily-called press conference, USA Swimming team physician, Dr. Jim Johnson, said: \u201cAs chief medical officer for USA Swimming at this competition, I am withdrawing Michael Phelps from the remainder of the meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phelps, who said he would consult with his physician, Dr. Peter Rowe of Johns Hopkins, and his physical therapist, Scott Heinlein, would not specify which part of his back was injured nor would he describe the nature of the injury.<\/p>\n
He did, however, indicate he was first injured a week-and-a-half ago and said that his nonstop touring probably exacerbated the condition. In a somber tone, Phelps recalled, \u201cmy sister (Whitney) was a world-class swimmer before her career was ended by a back injury. So even though we don\u2019t think this injury is a big issue, we just want to be extra-cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDIANAPOLIS, October 8. IN a surprise announcement at 7:20 this evening, superstar Michael Phelps withdrew from the remaining three days of competition at the 7th FINA Short Course World Swimming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n