“Most of the All Blacks don’t have A.C.L.’s (Anterior Cruciate Ligaments).”

This was the advice given to me by the orthopaedic surgeon. At the time, in the early 1990s, he also advised me that recovery from the surgery to put things right would be worse than the injury itself; that he couldn’t reproduce the function of a natural A.C.L., whose structure, in layman’s terms, had ‘differential stretchiness’ between the outside and the core; and that if I got myself a CTi knee brace and kept my muscles strong to support the joint, I would be able to ski again. If New Zealand’s fabled rugby union team could play at a professional level without their A.C.L.s, there was hope for me.

Continue reading “A Life Without Ligaments – And How to Avoid It!”