Its even more heartbreaking when an injury happens doing something other than surfing. Photo: Jacob Szekely // YouTube
You may have noticed something a little different about Jacob Szekely’s US Open coverage this year. As always, the La Jolla influencer showed up, finagled his way in and asked irreverent questions of attendees. However, this time he was sporting crutches and an orthopedic boot. In his latest video, Zeke explained what actualy happened that led to his injury – and what it means for his career.
As he tells it, the incident came after a whirlwind year for Szekely. After months of traveling to far-flung destinations to stack up clips, he had just come back from the iForget airshow in Huntington Beach and was already gearing up for the US Open. In that brief moment of respite, he decided to take a little bit of a breather to go skating with some friends.
“[It was a] mellow day at the skatepark, we weren’t even filming,” Szekely describes. “Sorge and Cory Juno and a couple of Aussie press skaters were pushing me and I ended up slamming pretty hard on a front 50/50. I came down, jumped to my knees and just hit my kneecap. I tried to walk it off, but unfortunately I knew it was pretty bad. It swelled up like crazy, bunch of blood was all clotted up in there. I realized I had fractured my patella or maybe even broke it.”
A doctor’s visit confirmed his fears. Szekely had a vertical fracture of his patella. “I actually got pretty good news that I’m only going to have to have it in a brace for four weeks,” he continued. “After the four-week mark, I can slowly start to move it and PT it and I’ll be back in the water surfing in like eight to 12 weeks.”
So it looks like we’re going to see a slowdown of Szekely content in the near future – or at least content that requires him to be up and on a board. He seems to be taking it in stride, though. “I think it was God’s way of telling me to slow down and really work on myself and focus on all the other things on my plate,” he concluded. “I have a lot of other responsibilities and a lot of other plans and a lot of other dreams and goals and ambitions and now I’m just excited to kind of work on that and grind into that.”
