'I'm grateful I can walk': High jump rising star Erin Shaw mounting comeback from freak gym accident

Australian high jumper Erin Shaw did so much damage to her lower back in a horrific gym accident in December last year that she underwent spinal fusion surgery and spent two months in a brace.

There was another option, a more conservative one, put to her first: not undergoing surgery and spending three months in a brace. But taking that avenue, surgeons warned, would come with a far longer road to recovery. It would also likely end her high jump career.

"I was kind of like, 'OK, next option'," Shaw, 21, recalls with a laugh.

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The high jump rising star from the northern beaches of Sydney is talking to Wide World of Sports over coffee – recounting the freak accident, detailing the gruelling battle she's faced since, and opening up on her desire to mount a comeback to the world stage.

She's sharing her story at a cafe at Sydney Olympic Park on April 10. It's day two of the national athletics championships. She wants to be competing at the national titles, in a field headlined by reigning world champion Nicola Olyslagers and former world champion Eleanor Patterson, who's a mentor and close friend of hers, but her back is now bionic and it needs time to heal.

Shaw was doing Bulgarian split squats – a type of single-legged squat – just before Christmas when she stumbled and hit the floor with a thud. She was doing the squats with a bar on her back, and 135 kilograms were on that bar. Lifting such a heavy weight is no mean feat, especially on one leg, but Shaw had done this exercise countless times.

With one little slip, she crumbled under the hefty weight.

All 135 kilograms.

For a brief period of time, she was still on her feet, her face was on the floor, and the bar was on her back.

"It crushed my spine," Shaw says.

For 45 minutes, she lay on the floor waiting for an ambulance to arrive – fortunately in the company of her strength and conditioning coach.

"It felt like a huge kind of seizing of your whole back and body," she remembers.

"It got to a point where my back was cramping so much that I felt like I couldn't breathe, because the diaphragm moves. So it was quite painful.

"I could feel my feet and move and stuff, which was really good."

The first thought she had after hitting the floor was: will I be able to jump again?

"It's definitely the athlete mindset," she says with a laugh.

"You have so many goals that you've worked towards your whole life up until now, and then for them to be stripped away from you is quite a scary thought.

"And then I guess in time you think, 'Oh, I'm grateful I can walk, I can swim, and I can run'."

The disc between her L1 and T12 vertebrae – the top of the lumbar spine and the bottom of the thoracic spine – burst and disappeared into the bloodstream. All ligaments around that part of the spine were left in tatters. And she fractured her L1.

"So a bit of everything," she says.

She spent a week at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital. The day of the surgery? Christmas Day.

"So my poor family had to spend Christmas Day in hospital," Shaw says.

She had metal rods inserted on each side of her spine, and two screws drilled into each of the two affected vertebrae.

Then, with the metal in place and her back patched up, she was introduced to the brace – a fibreglass cast spanning her shoulders to her hips. She had to wear it for 10 weeks. She didn't have to sleep in it, but it was vital to keep the tossing and turning to a minimum.

"The first 10 weeks of the injury were really hard, really rough," Shaw remembers.

"You're in pain, and you're not so sure of the next steps.

"I was in a brace and that was kind of a constant reminder that I had really hurt my back, and it was in the middle of summer, so it was just uncomfortable. It was just constrictive, and you can't move.

"But it was a means to an end, and I knew my surgeon and Rob [Mullard, her physio] were very set on having it on for 10 weeks to give my back the best-possible chance to fuse properly and solidly, so that when I do get back to jumping in eight to ninth months it's solid and it won't move. So I trusted them."

She hasn't yet been to an airport since the surgery.

"That'll be an interesting experience," she says, grinning.

As Shaw has navigated the comeback trail – cautiously ticking off bodyweight squats, seated exercises and heat chamber bike sessions at the New South Wales Institute of Sport – she's focused on "the small wins".

She developed a greater appreciation for those as she worked her way back from a serious knee injury – a torn patella tendon – last year. She tore the tendon while competing in Japan last May. The knee she injured was the knee on her take-off leg.

She hadn't yet returned to competition from the knee injury when disaster struck in the gym.

"I'm learning to take those small wins and be happy with those small wins in this process because it's just lots of those put together that will get me back," Shaw says.

"It's really exciting. When my surgeon said we can go back to swimming and running, and it had only been three months [since the gym accident], that was a nice positive, that was earlier than I was expecting.

"Jumping seems really far away, but if I look at just the next step, it's actually quite achievable ... It gets a lot more achievable mentally.

"I've actually coped with this back injury better than I expected, which has been nice.

"I think my knee injury really shook me. I was quite upset about it. I was struggling in terms of what this means and the length of the rehab, and I was learning that the process is up and down, and it's not linear. So when I did my back, it was sad, it sucked and I was so upset about it for a while, but I think I had learned how to cope, and learned how to trust that it'll be OK and you'll get back."

More than ever, she's drawing a sense of self-value in areas of her life outside high jump.

And there is a lot more to Erin Shaw than Erin Shaw the high jumper. She's studying a Bachelor of Psychological Science online via the University of New England, loves going to the beach and going out for coffee, has loving friends and family, and can speak German, having lived and studied in Germany for two years of high school.

"I've learnt a lot about trying to separate my worth from the sport, and finding other things outside of sport that give me happiness and purpose as well," Shaw says.

"And I think that'll only make me a better athlete when I do get back to the track."

Shaw pulled on green and gold for the world athletics under-20 championships in Colombia in 2022, where she finished fourth, and again for the senior world championships in Budapest in 2023.

Her sights are set on making the Australian team for next year's world championships, to be held in Beijing, and the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

"I'm pretty convinced I'm gonna get back, and honestly be a better and stronger athlete for it," she says.

"There's no doubt from me."

Her personal best is 1.90 metres. She wants to join the two-metre club – Olyslagers and Patterson are the only Australian women in history in that club – and make as many Australian teams as she can.

"She's got a smile on her face every time she comes in to NSWIS," Chris Brandner, Shaw's strength and conditioning coach at the institute, tells WWOS.

"You have your days where you're like, 'Why me? Why did this happen?'" Shaw says.

"But it happened, you can't change the fact that it happened, and I think looking forward is really helpful.

"I ask myself, 'What can I do today to make myself feel a bit better about it or improve myself as an athlete?', even if it's the littlest things like doing some calf raises or some knee isometrics.

"I think, 'How can I be a little bit better today?'"