Osmond finished for the season

Kaetlyn Osmond has done the smart thing, the hard thing: she’s calling it quits for this season.

The 19-year-old two-time Canadian champion won’t be back to defend her title in two weeks at the Canadian national skating championships in Kingston, Ont.

She won’t compete at all this season.

It’s heartbreaking, especially in light of her one main hope at the start of the season: “to stay away from injuries.” A short time later, she fractured the fibula of her right leg and this injury is holding her back like no other injury has.

Osmond’s career has been laced with injury problems. She had to rush her Olympic preparations last season after suffering a stress fracture and then another injury to her hamstring. Her recovery was miraculous. She lost her fall season, but still made it to the Canadian championships to win her second title, despite a host of other young, able women biting at her heels. She helped Canada win the Olympic team silver medal.

She showed up at the national training camp last September on another little mini-comeback, having aggravated her stress fracture over the summer. She did her run-throughs with no jumps. However, she was hopeful.

The most painful thing about the injury that is currently derailing her is that it wasn’t an overuse injury. It was a silly thing. She was working on choreography, swerved to avoid another skater, caught an edge and fell.

Her recovery has been remarkable, but this time, she just can’t overcome her problems in time. She called it her longest, scariest recovery/injury, ever. She tweeted that she was finally cleared to skate again on Nov. 3, after 52 days, 15 hours and 59 minutes of being off the ice. By December 4, we saw her do a single Axel. The clock was ticking and everybody knew it.

On Jan. 3, she did her first public performance at a festival at the West Edmonton Mall, where she was seen doing double Axels.

She’s not in Adelina Sotnikova’s situation, where she will have a test skate to see if she is ready for Europeans, after having missed her nationals. Osmond is just done for the year, period. She won’t try to get onto the team for Four Continents or world championships. She’s setting competition aside to take the long view; complete recovery. Her body will thank her.

“It was a really hard decision for me not to compete this year,” she said in a prepared release today. “I tried everything to be ready to come back, but I just couldn’t get to where I wanted to be for competitions this year. I’m hoping this break and healing time will set me up for a great season next year.”