| Spain. Americas Cup: Shosholoza grinder former rugby player Shaun Pammenter benched with back injury |
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| Monday, 26 June 2006 | |
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Janine Geigele: Top Shosholoza grinder Shaun Pammenter – a former Kwa-Zulu Natal-B rugby player - has been benched after suffering a serious back injury during sail training two weeks ago. Pammenter won’t be onboard for the Louis Vuitton Act 12 match racing event currently being contested in the Mediterranean off Valencia, Spain, and is likely to be off for the next six weeks. Pammenter, who gave up his rugby career to join Shosholoza at the end of 2004 described his accident as more painful than his worst rugby tackle. "I was hit in the back by the jockey pole, with a force that not only knocked me flat, but shot me down the open hatch on the boat. The clip that was holding the sail in place shot open and the pole broke one of my lower vertebrae. At first, while the surrounding muscles were still warm and the adrenalin from the accident and tension of the practice race was still high, I was still able to continue with my duties. But, as we rounded the next buoy, the pain set in and I was eventually lying flat on the boat, unable to move," said Pammenter. "The prognosis is rest for about six weeks. I watch the boat leaving the shore every day and it's really difficult to accept that I won't be with the guys on the start line. My focus now is rehabilitation so I can be ready to resume my team position as soon as possible,” Pammenter continued. Julian Calefato, a bio-kineticist with the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town who travels with Team Shosholoza, is overseeing Pammenter’s recovery through physiotherapy and a strength building programme in the in-house gym at the team’s base. “It’s a big loss for us. Shaun’s one of our most powerful grinders and America’s Cup class yachts need an enormous amount of power to optimize their performance so are feeling his absence. Being a small team it also puts us short on reserves,” said skipper Mark Sadler. The grinders are a select group of 100 kg plus sailors who represent the power house of an America’s Cup class yacht. Their specific task is to drive the winches which control some 750 square metres of sail area that power up the 24 ton racing machine for optimum speeds in controlled tactical manoeuvres. Simply hoisting the 500 square metre spinnaker up the yacht's 34 metre high mast - the height of a 12 story building - requires the combined brute force of at least four grinders. When racing at full pelt the team relies on the combined strength of at least six to eight grinders working flat out for intermittent explosive periods of 20 to 30 seconds over some two hours of racing. "The reason they need to be so strong, big and explosive is that they need to produce a lot of power intermittently over a sustained period of time," says Julian Calefato, a bio-kineticist with the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town who travels with Team Shosholoza. www.teamshosholoza.com |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 26 June 2006 ) |
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