An Olympic athlete has had his finger amputated after he suffered an injury just so he can play in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Just two weeks ago, Matthew Dawson, a 30-year-old hockey player from Australia, suffered a badly broken finger on his right-hand during a team training session in Perth, Australia, and, after consulting with doctors, he found out the injury would take months to recover from and that he would miss out on the opportunity to play in his third Olympic Games.
But instead of opting for a long recovery, Dawson made a decision that would shock his teammates and has already made headlines around the world. He decided to amputate his finger so that he could compete in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
The hardest thing for me to understand here is that we’re talking about field hockey
Field hockey is bigger in Australia and people are fanatics. People even disfigure themselves regularly in devotion to sports most of the world isn’t even aware exists like netball or Australian rules football. Life is just different in AUS (especially out in Perth) and mate knows his goals.
I get that people can become passionate about anything, but for me, hockey is ice hockey. Field hockey was something we played in middle school P.E.
To you, sure. The world is a big place.
I said from the beginning it was a dissonance to me.
Field Hockey, or just Hockey as it’s called, is a lot more popular than ice Hockey in (most of) Europe and possibly the rest of the world, excluding the USA and Canada.
Just like Football is extremely popular in the whole world except for North America, where they gave it a different name and then invented another game and called that Football.
The world is a big strange place sometimes.
I think it’s more divided by where it gets cold. Russia, Norway, Sweden… are also big on hockey. Even in the US, it’s kind of regional. The Upper Midwest and New England are crazy for hockey. In the winter, rinks pop up here and there in backyards
I guess it’s just weird to share your dissonance…
I wasn’t alone
And ping pong is something people play in rec rooms. It’s also a damn impressive Olympic sport.