2008 Gymnastics Gold Medalist Shawn Johnson announced her retirement from Olympic sports on Monday, after combating pain from her 2010 skiing injury and carefully considering the risks of continuing to train for the Olympics while trying to heal. Pole vault world champion Brad Walker of U.S. Track & Field explained the difficult decisions that Johnson, Walker and other injured athletes face in an interview with Examiner.com today. “Injuries are going to happen for sure. That’s just a part of sport,” observes Walker. “I was really bummed when I heard Shawn Johnson was retiring. The public would have really loved to see her at the Olympics. Olympic athletes struggle. Some end up with no money and a broken body.” Walker’s success has shown that there are alternatives, but that it remains difficult for injured athletes in sports like gymnastics where there are not many career opportunities beyond college and top athletes tend to retire in their late teens or early twenties, like Johnson. Brad Walker was injured while pole vaulting in late 2008. It looked gruesome: a pelvis injury, a ruptured disc in his back, plus a disc bulge in his neck. As Walker explains, injured Olympic athletes have only three choices — retire from sports, continue to train with pain, or undergo medical treatment. Walker chose the third option,  more