Wonky ankle grounds high jumper

Injuries seem to follow Nicole Forrester wherever she goes. Even to Beijing.
The lanky high jumper from the Mississauga Track and Field Club sprained her left ankle during a training session on Monday and the injury hampered her performance this morning at the Olympic Games. Forrester bowed out of the qualifying round after failing to clear the bar at 1.93 metres.
Forrester said later she was satisfied with her performance given the injury.
"I just wanted to be able to leave it all out there and do all I could do and I felt like I did that today," she said.
"Only yesterday in training did I start to feel confident with it," Forrester said of the injury.    It's not the first time an injury has plagued Forrester in an Olympic year. An ankle injury a month prior to the Games in Athens four years ago kept her home. She suffered from Achilles tendinitis in 1997, pulled her right hamstring one month before the 1998 Commonwealth Games and tore the attachment to her Achilles at the Pan Am Games in 1999.
Still, in Beijing, she managed to clear the bar at heights of 1.80 metres, 1.85 metres and 1.89 metres before bowing out. The standard to advance to the final was 1.96 metres or at least to be among the top-12 jumpers in the qualifying roung.
The 31-year-old high jumper won her third straight national high jump title at the Canadian track and field championships held in Windsor back in June with a leap of 1.95 metres. She plans to continue competing this year and next, and hinted at the possibility of trying to qualify for London in 2012.
"That would be the longest I would go is another four years, unless it's not fun anymore and I'm not jumping any higher," she said.