Annimari Korte was no longer able to achieve top speed after tearing the tendon in her hamstring last fall and having surgery on the injury.
15:49•Updated 15:57
Quick beeper Annimari Korte ended his racing career at the Helsinki Zoo on Sunday. Korte won his last 100m hurdles race with a time of 13.26 and then confirmed with tears in his eyes that a long and successful career is over.
– I don’t think it makes sense to compete when it doesn’t feel so nice anymore. There are so many other things in life right now that I would like to do more of. I feel that it would be a waste of my time to try to compete now in the summer, when I could be doing everything else I’m more excited about, Korte stated in SUL’s press release.
According to Kortte, the decision to stop came when it slowly became clear that after the rupture of the hamstring tendon last fall and the surgery for the injury, the act was no longer taking shape as smoothly as before.
– I didn’t want to stop for surgery. I wanted to recover from it and decide for myself where and how to stop. I had surgery on both hind thighs three years ago, but this was still the biggest surgery of my career, Korte recalled the autumn surgery.
– I got to a record breaking condition, but that anchored tendon is not meant to run over fences. It just won’t bend. You can’t use it fully over the fences, so I’m jumping over the fences a bit. So no top results could be expected in the fences anymore.
Korte has run 12.72 at her best in 2019. The result was the Finnish record until last summer, when Reetta Hurske ran 12.70.
Korte was in the semifinals of the World Championships in 2019 and also represented USome in the European Championships in 2018 and the Olympics in 2021.
Korte has said that he will switch to dog sledding competitions.
– Yes, I want to train with dogs. In October, Jämi will already have the EC competition, if there is time to train enough and give performances, Korte said.