With his injury woes behind him, Evan Jager is all set to get back on track this season. The 30-year-old has not raced since August 2018 after struggling with a chronic foot injury last year but he is feeling optimistic as the Olympics in Tokyo start to loom into view.
During his January training camp at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado, he resumed hurdling for the first time in 17 months. Late last summer he told the Northwest Herald: “Ideally, I would have been healthy and run at USA’s and tried to make the team and run at Worlds but my body was just not cooperating. I felt the smarter thing to do was focus on getting healthy and making sure I was ready for next year.”
In a post on Instagram last week, he noted:
“I hurdled for the first time since August 2018 and damn did it feel good! After sustaining a foot injury at the end of the 2018 season recovery has been an incredibly up and down road. 2019 was a really hard year for me mentally, physically and emotionally and I have had a certain amount of doubt as to whether or not I was ever going to be able to Steeple again. I always believed that I would but that doubt was always creeping in the back of my mind.
”Today was exactly what I needed to prove to myself that I would get back to being the athlete I knew I could be. Being able to hurdle might not be the biggest accomplishment but this year I’m trying to celebrate the little victories and not be so hard on myself when things don’t go exactly to plan.
”Anyways I’m happy and F@#&ING amped for this year!”