A former top track rider from Australia has claimed "experimental surgeries" were carried out on her in an effort to solve chronic pain and improve her performance.
The name Sophie Cape will perhaps not be well known to many in the cycling community outside Australia but following claims she has made in a new documentary that may be about to change.
Cape is a former track cyclist and downhill skier who crashed a large number of times and suffered repeated serious injury, as the video below shows.
She is now an award-winning artist based in Melbourne and on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Australian Story’ series her life as an artist was profiled as well as that period she spent competing in cycling and skiing.
She claimed in the documentary that she underwent what she termed “experimental surgeries” while an elite track rider and suffering serious leg pains.
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She says this was done after consultation with sports bodies including the Australian Institute of Sport.
The surgery was suggested, she says, for unexplained leg pain in the early 2000s while training as a track cyclist at the Western Australian Institute of Sport.
"At first they thought I had some form of compartment syndrome in my quads, which has never been seen before, so it was a long shot," Cape told Australian Story.
"So what we decided to do was cut the fascia off my quad muscles. Effectively what they did was strip the sheath off the outside of the muscles like the skin on the outside of a sausage to allow them to breathe, or grow, without restraint."
At first the surgery seemed to have worked and her performances improved only for the pain to return and become much worse.
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"That's when we tried the vascular surgery. They thought maybe we could widen the arteries going into the legs," Cape said.
"They cut my stomach open on both sides and took veins out of my shins, and put patch grafts into my arteries to make them larger."
She said she agreed to the surgeries at the time because she was "desperate to win at all costs".
The programme Cape was entered into from skiing was developed so riders who could offer competition to emerging star Anna Meares might be found.
But Cape said those who came into the project were thrown into competition on the track far too quickly, causing injury to many of them.
Jason Gulbin, talent identification and development manager at the AIS, said the programme was now an example of how development should not be done.
But he said the surgeries that were carried out were not experimental and that the medical staff used by AIS do not take risks.
You can see some of the ABC documentary by following this link.
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