Kyle Shewfelt of Canada won his country’s first artistic gymnastics gold in 2004. At a practice session in Germany last year he is misjudged a landing and splintered his shinbones along with suffering ligament damage.

He now has a metal plate and two screws in his left leg and a screw in the right.

“It will be a huge victory to be in Beijing after suffering the traumatic injury that I did,” he told Reuters from the western city of Calgary.

“I don’t want to come 50th, I want to challenge … I want to feel like I’m on fire and that I’m unstoppable and that I’m going to be able to hit my absolute best routine and that will equal another Olympic medal,” he said.

Shewfelt keeps a blog at Google’s blogging service where he writes about his training and the discipline it takes preparing for a major competition like the Olympics.

I think most people watching the Olympics give little thought as to exactly how much training and pain athletes go through just to reach the level to compete.

He writes:

“Right now is the time when I have to take 3 turns to my teammates 1. I have to practice extreme focus on each turn as well because I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t think I can handle another setback and so I am trying to protect myself while still pushing myself. This is an incredibly tiring time for me because I am giving everything I have when I am in the gym. I am not saving a bead of sweat or a millisecond of focus for when I am finished. My day is basically done when I walk out of the gym and get into my car (My mind and body are complete mush as I’m writing this actually…).”