KORTE Annimari

General
BACK PAIN
She was affected by a back injury between 2002 and 2009, which would sometimes make it impossible for her to train because of the level of discomfort it caused her. By 2008 she was finding it impossible to walk up stairs due to the pain in her back when she lifted her left leg, and she was unable to sit or stand in the same place for more than five minutes. In December 2008, having seen a number of medical professionals over the years, she was introduced to a Swedish doctor who believed he might have the solution. "First he tried to put a local anaesthesia to the nerves around facet joints in my back [where the MRI only showed little degeneration]. I got up from the table and I could lift my left leg right away, not much though since all the muscles were gone after such a long time of not lifting it. After that he burned all the nerves around three joints on both sides and said they might grow back in a couple years or they might never grow back. After a couple of weeks, I could already run even though it was still hard to lift my left leg because all the muscles were gone. After three months I ran close to my personal best even though I hadn't really trained in one-and-a-half years. In 2010 my training went well with my back and I only had minor pain and problems." (annimari.fi, 18 Jan 2020)

OCCUPATION
She has a master's degree in sports journalism from St. Mary's University in London, England, and in September 2019 she began working as a journalist for Finnish online sports media outlet, Ilta-Sanomat. She was motivated to pursue a career in the industry due to the injury problems she has experienced during her career. (LinkedIn profile, 11 Jun 2020; Twitter profile, 13 Jun 2020; apu.fi, 04 Oct 2019; cnn.com, 13 Aug 2018; is.fi, 06 Jun 2018)