I’ve long had a soft spot for the achilles tendon, my own and everyone else’s. This goes back to middle school where we read a book called Greeks and Trojans by Rex Warner, which I greatly enjoyed, although my engagement with the classics went no further. It related the story of the demise of the hero whose name the tendon bears. Also, my initial and my surname have been known to autocorrect to the name of the great warrior/tendon. We have a connection.
The achilles is the tendon connecting the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles in the calf to an insertion point at the calcaneus. Or, in English, it’s the worryingly cable-like thing running down the back of your ankle to your heel. The Greek Achilles was fatally wounded in the heel while fighting in the Trojan war. My own (non-fatal) achilles wound was sustained a long way from the gates of Troy, at a leisure centre in Stourbridge. I did it playing pickleball. Not especially heroic, I appreciate, but for someone who’d never picked up a pickleball paddle before, I was thought to be half-decent. Given the pain I’ve been in ever since, I doubt I’ll be back for more. And with his vulnerability in the heel area, I can’t imagine pickleball would have much suited the original Achilles either.
