Australian Athlete Amputates Part of Finger So He Can Go to Olympics

An Australian field hockey player who injured one of his fingers shortly before the start of the Summer Olympics in Paris has opted to amputate part of the finger so that he can compete in the games. Matt Dawson's ring finger on his right hand was hit by a hockey stick during a practice match, leaving the top of the finger almost completely severed, CNN reports. With just two weeks before he was supposed to play with the Kookaburras in Paris, he had a choice to make: surgeons could put a wire in his finger and try to reconstruct it, requiring four to six months of recovery time—or he could amputate the affected portion and be able to play in 10 days. He chose the latter option, and the finger was amputated at the knuckle, ABC reports.

"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," says Dawson, 30, who won silver with the team in Tokyo at the last summer games. He also competed at the 2016 games in Rio. "The story has blown up a lot more than I thought it would, to be honest with you." The team faces off with Argentina on Saturday. (More 2024 Paris Olympics stories.)