the essential
The player is slowly recovering from major neck surgery. The opportunity for him to return to the “fright” experienced in a yet “innocuous” moment.
Sometimes life hangs by a thread. Steven Kitshoff's only lasted two millimeters. The double world champion recently underwent neck surgery. The cause? An injury sustained during a Currie Cup match between the Western Force and the Griquas.
Everyone held their breath when Bok prop Steven Kitshoff injured his neck in a Currie Cup game in September, but no one realized how close he was to death. pic.twitter.com/iQwK2Kuz7x
— Rapport (@RapportSA) https://twitter.com/RapportSA/status/1868189622271946759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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“It happened in the strangest way possible, in a completely innocuous melee,” the pillar told the South African media Rapport. “It didn’t even collapse. I felt something crack in my back, three cracking noises: pop, pop, pop I continued to play, thinking it was a muscle tear But, today I know: I was two meters from the catastrophe, from the. dead.”
“You’re lucky we didn’t bury you.”
Little aware of the seriousness of his injury, the former UBB player understood it thanks to a doctor. “He said to me: 'You're lucky we didn't bury you during the week,'” remembers the man with 82 caps for South Africa. Before specifying: “The vertebra that moved is very close to my cerebral canal.”
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Since then, the “fear” has been evacuated along with a successful surgery, of which Steven Kitshoff shared some photos on Instagram. What to consider for a resumption of Rugby? Not sure. At 32, the Springbok says he is “not finished”. However, he still needs to obtain the approval of a specialist.
