Samuel Costa has to postpone Olympic dream

Italian hopeful Samuel Costa will not be able to go after top results in this Olympic season. The 24-year-old has been struggling with knee injuries for a long time and the process to get healthy and fully functional again did not go as planned.

After a great season 2016/17 that Costa finished on the 14th place in the overall ranking, he decided to have surgery on the knee that had given him trouble for a long period with constant inflammations. Unfortunately, this first surgery conducted in Verona in August of 2017 did not end with the desired result.

Costa consulted Dr. Arnold Gurndin of the Dolomiti Sport Clinic and agreed to try and fix the state of the knee with another surgery. This procedure went well but still left some questions open, so that Costa had to return to the surgical table one week later. It was decided to fix the issue on the lateral ligament properly, which means some months of rest to heal.

“My Olympic dream has to wait four more years”, Costa wrote on his facebook page. “I can’t control everything that happens in my life. But I can change how I relate to things happening. I wanna thank all the people who helped and motivated me in this special time.”