US gymnast Samantha Cerio, who broke both legs during a local event in Louisiana, has opened up about her career-ending injury, revealing that she didn’t initially realize what had happened.
Appearing on NBC’s Today Show, the 22-year-old Cerio said that she didn’t understand how serious her injury was until she looked down and saw that her knees had been dislocated.
“When I had landed that one, I felt like something was a little wrong, and I thought I had just hyperextended my knees until I looked down and that wasn’t the case,” she said.
“When I saw what had happened, that’s when the pain kind of started to set in, and it got worse. It was a big, ‘Oh shoot, what just happened?’”
Also on rt.com US gymnast breaks both legs in career-ending accident (GRAPHIC VIDEO)Cerio was seriously injured in April during a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Baton Rouge Regional event in Louisiana. The gymnast landed awkwardly during her opening tumbling pass of her floor routine, breaking both legs.
The retired gymnast regretted that the sickening video of her gruesome injury went viral with many users tagging Cerio in their posts, making her relive the agonizing moment.
“I think it’s made people more aware of what they see on the internet,” Cerio said.
“When you see something like that, you kind of want to watch it just to see what happens, because you’re curious about it, but at the same time, you don’t think about the people that it could impact.”