Ryan Lochte is getting a second opinion from a doctor about his knee injuries, but his dad said MCL surgery is likely.
“He just needs to plan on staying out of the pool until January,” Steve Lochte told the Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal on Wednesday.
Lochte tore his left MCL and sprained his ACL after a teenage girl fan ran to him, he caught her and they both fell over in Gainesville, Fla., on Sunday. Lochte’s knee hit a curb, according to his publicist.
“We’ll have to see what the doctor says,” Steve Lochte said. “But the consensus is to go ahead and get the MCL repaired, instead of eight weeks of rehab. Ryan can’t go without repairing the MCL. It will affect his breaststroke kick.”
Steve Lochte, the head coach of Daytona Beach Swimming, said he expects Ryan Lochte to just rebuild the strength in the ACL, since it was not torn.
Earlier Wednesday, Lochte’s sister told the newspaper it was too soon to know how long Lochte will be out of competition.
“At this point, they’re saying he does not need knee surgery,” Kristin Lochte-Keeler said.
Lochte’s sister told the newspaper the knee was compromised before the incident.
“A fan jumped on him, and he already has a bad knee and that knee buckled,” she said.
Lochte has a long list of bizarre injuries.
He tore his left meniscus break dancing, fractured a shoulder falling out of a tree, fractured a foot in a scooter accident, sprained his ankle chasing his Doberman, Carter, strained an MCL reaching for a cellphone in his car and has hurt himself skateboarding, according to various reports over the years.
Lochte, who recently moved from Florida to Charlotte, had been scheduled to compete at Duel in the Pool, Dec. 20-21, in Scotland. That appears extremely unlikely now.
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