Injured triathlon star Hayden Wilde has taken two more major steps on his road to recovery by completing his first outdoor cycle ride and an indoor swimming session since the horrific bike crash that could so easily have ended his career.
The 27-year-old New Zealander is battling back after being hit by a truck while riding in Japan – a terrifying incident that left him with a punctured lung, six broken ribs, and a smashed-up scapula on his left shoulder.
Charting his recovery through a YouTube VLOG, which is embedded in this story below, the Paris Olympics silver medallist seems in high spirits as he embarks on a ride through the Pyrenees Mountains before stepping back into the pool for a full swim workout.
‘The body just responds’
Wilde, who lost out on Paris gold after an epic battle with Britain’s Alex Yee, is determined to make a full recovery from his injuries and has split his time between the Red Bull Performance Centre in Austria and his base in the Andorran mountains.
While riding to the top of the Coll d’Ordino mountain pass, he says: “This will be my first ride outside, so I’m looking forward to it. It’s a good day to be out. I haven’t been outside (on the bike) for a few months now, so it should be exciting, and we’ll see how it goes.
“The shoulder’s feeling pretty good. The benefit of being up in the mountains is that the roads are actually pretty smooth here in Andorra, so there is not a lot of vibration in the shoulder. And since we’re always climbing, I don’t actually have a lot of pressure through the shoulder, which is super nice, so it helps a lot just with the riding.
“It is good, there is no pain. When I am running, I feel smooth, the muscle memory is all there, it is just good to remind the body what it can do,” he said. “Ask the body a question, and then hopefully the body just responds.”
Numbers trending upwards
Wilde, who recently had the all-clear from a series of specialists regarding his lung injury, has not ruled out the potential of a return to competition this year, and, according to his girlfriend, Belgian triathlete Hanne De Vet, he is making great progress.
After announcing that he was going to start swimming ‘with both arms’ for the first time, she added that it was not only in the pool where he was making great strides, as she is now unable to keep up with him on the bike and when running.
Hanne said: “I’ll get the camera in the water and show you this guy’s new stroke. To be honest, it actually looks better than it used to be before. He probably should have got the surgery before the Paris Olympics; that would have made his life way easier, but oh, well, we live and learn.
“Isn’t it great? I can’t follow him anymore on the bike, so his fitness is definitely growing. That means that he’s close to getting racing again. I think he’s enjoying the way back to fitness as well because he can see his numbers improving. It’s good for him to see the numbers going up instead of going down.”
Inspired by Clarkson’s Farm!
And Wilde even hinted at what he might turn to should the recovery not work out, having been inspired by Jeremy Clarkson in the Amazon series, Clarkson’s Farm.
“I’m a big fan currently of the series Clarkson’s Farm. And I just want to get into a bit of agriculture,” he said. “I don’t know why, but the idea is to speak to the locals and see if it’s OK for them to give me some land. Like, they can still own the land, but I’ll just look after it.
“How good would that be? Just putting in and tending to my own plants, planting some carrots, some potatoes. It’s great weather here, with rain at night and sunshine in the morning, the growth would be rapid.”
Triathlon fans are hoping that he doesn’t need to swap his training for tractors just yet.
Triathlon’s mid-season report card: Tim Don on who’s raising the bar this triathlon race season
