Olympic athlete amputates his finger so he can play in 2024 Paris Games

Sunday, July 28, 2024 - An Australian hockey player chose to have part of his finger amputated to feature at the Paris Olympics.

Matt Dawson injured his finger badly after being hit by a hockey stick during a practice session two weeks before he was meant to represent his country at his third Games. The incident left the top of his ring finger on his right hand completely mangled, throwing his Olympic plans into jeopardy.

Rather than undergoing surgery to save his finger, which would have meant a two-month recovery, the 30-year-old took the drastic decision to remove part of his finger from the knuckle up.

"It was pretty significant the injury to the finger. When people around you – when they see it and don’t say anything – you obviously know, it’s pretty bad," Dawson told CNN Sport.

"Things got moving pretty quickly. And all I remember someone saying was, 'We need to see a plastic surgeon'."

The impact left Dawson’s finger in such a bad way that "the surgeon said it was very lucky still to be hanging on".

The two-time Olympian, who was part of the Australian team that won a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, passed out when he saw how bad his finger was in the changing room after the incident. He assumed his dream of competing in Paris was all but over.

Desperate to find a way to compete at the Games, Dawson sought advice from a plastic surgeon who warned he might not regain full function of his finger even with reconstructive surgery, which would have required putting a wire through the bone.

But he was presented with an alternative option: if part was amputated there was a chance he could be back playing within 10 days.

"I’m definitely closer to the end of my career than the start and, who knows, this could be my last [Olympics], and if I felt that I could still perform at my best then that’s what I was going to do," Dawson told the Parlez Vous Hockey podcast.

"If taking the top of my finger was the price I had to pay, that’s what I would do."

He is expected to play for Australia against Argentina on Saturday – just 16 days after he was injured.

Coach Colin Batch said: "He’s certainly set the bar high for anyone getting a broken finger in the future, but full marks to Matt; he’s made that decision and obviously really committed to playing in Paris."

His teammates were left stunned by the news of his partial amputation.

"We didn’t really know what to think, and then we heard that he went to the hospital and chopped his finger off, which was pretty interesting because I know people would give an arm and a leg and even a little bit of finger to be here sometimes," said Aran Zalewski, the Australia captain, at a news conference in Paris.

It is not the first time Dawson has experienced a serious injury. He nearly lost an eye after being struck by a hockey stick in the build-up to the 2018 Commonwealth Games but recovered in time to represent the Kookaburras at the tournament, where the team won gold.