Dual world championship mogul medallist Matt Graham has revealed he has been skiing with a fractured collarbone and will undergo surgery for a third time later this month.
The 28-year-old won a silver medal in the individual competition last week at the world titles in Bakuriani, Georgia, and backed it up with a bronze in the dual - a new Olympic event that sees skiers go head-to-head on the course against their rivals.
An Olympic silver medallist at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Graham was left shattered four years later in Beijing when he failed to make the finals, with his preparation badly interrupted by a collarbone injury initially suffered in training.
He required two rounds of surgery before and after China due to complications, including a haematoma, when the bone failed to mend.
But Graham told AAP he discovered last September that - despite having two lots of plates and screws inserted - his collarbone had still not healed.
"I had a plate and screws the first time around, then in the rush to return in time for the Olympics I had what they call a non-union, which is when the bone doesn't heal," he said.
"I had to go in again after the Olympics and redo the operation, so I had a new set of plates and screws for that.
"And then I found out in September that I had another non-union, but where I was at I felt like I was going to push through the season and get it done in the off-season."
The Gosford champion then crashed earlier this month at Deer Valley in Utah, where he won a World Cup event for the first time since 2017, and bent the plate.
Graham was forced to carry the new issue into competition in Georgia, where he was only beaten by Canadian ace Mikael Kingsbury - an eight-time world champion.
"It didn't worry me too much until I had a big crash which impacted the collarbone really hard and bent the plate but it settled down after a week or so ," Graham told AAP.
"I had to change the way I sleep a bit, but it doesn't affect me too much when I ski."
Between surfing trips, Graham is currently training at the NSW Institute of Sport to keep fit ahead of the World Cup finals, which take place from March 17-20 in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
"I'm currently sitting third in the single moguls on the World Cup tour and fourth overall so I will go over there and try and get a couple of results and come back with a top-three ranking in both the singles and the overall," he said.
"I've got surgery booked on March 28 and then I will take the rehab journey nice and slow and give it the best chance to heal."
