Racing
League
Rugby
Cricket
Golf
Motorsport
Combat Sports
Football
Netball
Basketball
Other Sports
Sport Nation
Back on the start line: Hayden Wilde reflects on 'amazing' recovery from harrowing bike crash
Stephen Foote • August 5th, 2025 2:42 pm
Photo: Photosport
It's been an eventful year for Kiwi triathlon ace Hayden Wilde, predominantly - and unfortunately - for all of the wrong reasons.
The Olympic silver and bronze medallist exploded off the blocks this year, winning his opening two races in Abu Dhabi and Singapore to rise to third in the World Triathlon rankings.
But just a couple of weeks later, his campaign came dramatically unstuck in Tokyo, where a collision with a truck during the bike leg left him with a punctured lung, six broken ribs, and a smashed-up scapula on his left shoulder.
However, against all odds and months ahead of his rehabilitation schedule, Wilde is poised to return to the start line this weekend at the T100 London to cap a remarkably rapid recovery - having missed just two races while he worked his way back to full fitness.
In fact, what may have amounted to a traumatic ordeal for most, Wilde - in a strange sense - has almost seemed to have savoured.
"It honestly hasn't been that bad," Wilde told Sport Nation's Millsy & Guy. "I thought it was going to be worse.
"It's weird to say, but it's kind of been a bit of a nice experience, in a sense that you wake up every day, you'd normally have a purpose to try and get to a start line and be the best you can be. But this time, it's waking up and being the best you can be to try and get better every single day.
"There was not really any point where I was relatively depressed. It was more like, I wake up and I want to get to the start line ASAP. I need to pay off a house here. I needed to get onto that start line. So, I was actually in really high spirits the whole time.
"Obviously days were really long and pretty fatiguing. But it's been quite an experience in a sense that I've never had an injury like this. It's quite intriguing just to see the progression every single day and just slowly working on it.
"From not being able to lift a one kg weight to then the next day you're up to two, just seeing those little 'one-percenters' - it's quite nice, to be honest."
Hayden Wilde in action at last year's Olympics | Photo: Photosport
That said, the initial stages of the treatment had its challenges, primarily related to being stuck in Japan's medical system.
His badly damaged scapula required surgery before the healing process began within a few weeks of being injured, a procedure the local doctors weren't prepared to go ahead with.
The consequences of any delay carried huge risk, with the chance Wilde would no longer be able to lift his left arm above his shoulder - a career-limiting move for any swimmer.
Wilde's team brought his doctor from New Zealand to work through the logistics of relocating him to Belgium for the surgery but not before he'd considered the possibility of being forced into a drastic professional pivot.
"I had to get flown over with a medical emergency doctor, just in case he had to stab my chest to get some air out of my lung," he explained.
"It would have been a bit of a nightmare, but I potentially could have had some more alternative options of becoming a professional cyclist or a runner instead.
"There were options there on the table, which we were kind of considering at that point."
Finn Butcher on life after winning an Olympic gold medal | Scotty and Izzy
Early diagnoses had Wilde slated for a return to racing in December, a schedule that has been emphatically smashed with confirmation of his UK comeback this weekend. Wilde says the speedy recovery has left the medical professionals at Red Bull's High Athlete Performance Centre in Austria "pretty amazed".
The Whakatane product says his team have been cautious in managing his recuperation, as he insisted he'd only re-don the lycra once he was back to a level where he was realistically capable of winning.
Now, the 27-year-old believes he'll be coming back an even better version of himself - a daunting prospect for his rivals.
"The riding is probably as good, maybe better, than it was pre-crash. The swimming is getting better week on week and we kind of feel that my swimming ability is enough to be still within the race, then having my cycling and running capabilities it should be okay to kind of be there in the pointy end and hopefully go for the win.
"It's pretty cool to have such a big injury and come back just three months later."
And in three years' time, Wilde hopes to be back on the dais in Los Angeles to add the one Olympic medal missing from his collection in what would be the ultimate swansong, having come up painstakingly short in Paris.
"For sure it keeps me up at night and keeps me motivated to try and get that gold medal in LA.
"I'll do what I can to try to get the trifecta."
Listen to the full interview below:
