Madi Rowlands: Blood clot halts freestyle skier's career
- Published
Madi Rowlands said her sporting future was "kind of unknown at the moment"
A 19-year-old freestyle skiing champion has said her future is uncertain after she suffered a blood clot in the brain.
Madi Rowlands, who won gold at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics, was taken to hospital in acute pain with a suspected migraine.
Doctors discovered a clot and prescribed blood thinning medication, which led her to cancel a skiing trip in New Zealand.
She said her sporting future was "kind of unknown at the moment".
The teenager, from Maidstone in Kent, won gold in the ladies' ski halfpipe and bronze in the ladies' ski slopestyle in 2016.
She said she first felt "relief" that her condition had been diagnosed, but added: "During my hospital stay, I was sitting there alone on this ward thinking 'why the hell has this happened to me?'. Like, I'm young, I'm fit."
Her father Daran Rowlands said: "I've always felt a little bit anxious when she's competing, but now there's the added worry that she's going to bang her head or have a fall that's going to induce some sort of blood clot.
"Until we get the full results and diagnosis we are never going to know if it's a repeatable issue or if it was a one-off, but it will always be a worry for me."