Exclusive: Joe Fraser overcomes injury nightmare with eyes firmly on Paris

“I think I got my mojo back,” posted Fraser on social media after winning all-around gold at last month’s British Gymnastics Championships.

His first major win since becoming the first British male to be crowned European all-around champion in 2022, it was a success which arguably meant more considering the challenges he has overcome just to get back competing.

Replace the word “mojo” with “Olympic dreams” or even “career” and you wouldn’t be far from the truth.

“I have definitely had moments over the past year when I wondered whether it was all over,” says Fraser. “It wasn’t that I couldn’t mentally do gymnastics anymore. I just wasn’t sure my body was up to it.

“The ‘mojo’ line is from a Jay-Z song. It felt fitting, considering the position I was in.

“There are so many things I have had to overcome behind the scenes. Actually managing to do that and come out the other side is so satisfying.”

At the start, it all seemed so straightforward. When Fraser underwent surgery to repair a labrum tear in his right shoulder in February last year, he expected to be back within six months. He even, in his words, decided to “kill two birds with one stone” by undergoing a further operation to properly repair the foot he fractured, just two weeks before winning three gold medals at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

Yet as the days, weeks and months ticked by, it became clear Fraser’s recovery was not going to be so easy as expected. Even at the turn of the year, his chances of being back in time to compete in Paris this summer appeared seriously in doubt.

“I’d had surgery on my other arm previously and I guess I was naive to think things would go so smoothly again,” explains Fraser.

“It’s been a really tough 12 months trying to get back fit. Every time I was going into the gym and I was not quite there, struggling to crawl, it was coming back to me that I was losing days.

“Going into this year, a lot of people probably thought I was not going to get back in time for Paris.

“I was struggling. I am just glad I was able to stay focused. There are times when I was going well and then I would fall off a cliff.

“That is part of sport and part of life. Sometimes you are going in the right direction and you have a blip. But you just have to keep going.”

The fight for Fraser was both physical and mental. Gymnastics, the former Sandwell Academy student explains, is “all in the joints”.

“They take a beating,” he continues. “At the bottom of a swing you are something like 10 times your body weight. The G-forces are quite something.

“When you are trying to get back fit, the rest of your body has not been doing the sport for that amount of time too. So that whole 12 months I was struggling with my shoulder, I was picking up niggles in my fingers, knees and ankles and having to manage those as well.”

All the while, Fraser was at British Gymnastics’ Lilleshall base watching team-mates train in preparation for competitions and wondering whether he would ever be in that position again.

“They were at their best and I was learning how to crawl again, how to walk,” he says. “I had to see the progress I was making, even if it was something small like lifting my arms over my head for the first time. Those small margins have a big impact.”

Fraser has never seemed the type easily fazed. He’s proved his ability to handle the pressure time and again, whether it be when becoming Britain’s first-ever world champion on parallel bars in 2019, or at Birmingham 2022 where, under the weight of expectation, he gave the air of being the coolest person in the building through five days of intense competition. That was despite the pain of a broken foot and the added inconvenience of having had his appendix removed, just five weeks before the Games.

Yet sitting down to chat at this week’s SportAccord conference, hosted by his home city just a few hundred yards from where he delighted the crowds in the Utilita Arena 20 months ago, you are reminded he is human.

“The Commonwealth Games were everything I dreamed of and more,” says Fraser, who grew up in Ladywood. “Given I had my appendix out five weeks before and fractured my foot two weeks before, it was daunting and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.

“If it had not been in Birmingham, I might have struggled to find the courage to compete.”

Fraser credits his family, in particular parents Adrian and Yvonne, for helping him get through the tough times, along with Lee Woolls, his coach at the City of Birmingham gymnastics since the age of eight.

“They were the people seeing me on a day-to-day basis, encouraging me when I was thinking I was not going to get back,” he explains.

“The physios strength and conditioning team at GB were huge too. These people were trying to get me back, thinking of every different way, getting my shoulder prepared for all the crazy positions we put it in as gymnasts. I am really grateful and thankful.”

Like many professional athletes, Fraser also employs the help of a psychologist and the words of Allan Johnston were particularly important in helping him through the darkest moments.

“Allan was there when I talked about my mental struggles to get back,” says Fraser. “I kept thinking to myself I am not the old Joe Fraser anymore. I was trying to get back to that, rather than being this new 2.0 version of me.

“I have been using a psychologist since the Tokyo Olympics and found it very useful, someone I can share my thoughts and bounce ideas off, trying to think about me as a person, rather than just Joe the gymnast.”

There are few sports so tough and brutal as gymnastics. Fraser knows he is in a profession where years of hard work can be lost by millimetres.

“When you think about the two different outcomes you can have at a major championships, they are so vastly different,” he says.

“You can do really well and everyone is saying congratulations and you have that awe of so many people congratulating you.

“Or it can go the opposite way, where you don’t do so well and make a mistake. Then you have loads of people saying they are sorry.

“You work years and years for those moments and those are your two outcomes, it is good to take yourself back and see it for what it is. That is where the psychologist helps.

“It’s especially important when you have multiple day competitions, where the first day might not go so well on an individual front but you still have a team competition to do.

“Or it can be the opposite way, where things go well and you have to stay focused. Having that support network makes it much better.”

Fraser will no doubt lean on it again during a summer which could define his career.

The European Championships take place later this month in Italy, while Paris itself is now less than four months away. GB will name its squad in June.

Having so recently wondered whether it might all be over, now there is hope the best is yet to come.

“The one thing I am most proud of is none of my routines have gone backwards,” says Fraser. “Through all my injuries and setbacks I have maintained where I was at and in some areas pushed on.

“I will continue pushing on as much as I can, make the routines better, more difficult and better executed. I would like to think I have been in the best shape I have been. I hope it will continue getting better and better.”