Australian Field Hockey Player Amputates Finger to Play in the Olympics

Getting to the Olympics, the greatest sporting event in the world, often takes years of training and major sacrifices: of academics, social life, maybe postponement of career goals.

Then there is Matthew Dawson, an Australian field hockey player, who chose to amputate the top joint of his right ring finger rather than miss the Paris Olympics.

Dawson, 30, who also was on Australia’s Olympic team in Rio and in Tokyo, where the team won silver, seriously injured the fingertip two weeks ago. During a practice match in Perth, Australia, on the morning of July 11, another player’s hockey stick accidentally hit the finger, leaving it bleeding and partly detached, Dawson said.

“The first thought: OK, that’s it,” he said in a phone interview from the Olympic Village in Paris. “The Olympic dream is over.”

He consulted a plastic surgeon that same morning, who after examining an X-ray offered the option to amputate the finger below the top knuckle, Dawson said.

The alternative would have been to insert a wire to reconnect the tip, requiring months of healing with no guarantee of full recovery. But, the surgeon told him, amputation meant Dawson would most likely be able to play in 10 days’ time.