Triathlon superstar Lionel Sanders suffered fractured hip in bike crash which ended his season

Lionel Sanders has revealed that the bike crash which ended his triathlon season prematurely last year left him with a fractured hip.

The Canadian star had been poised to round off a successful 2024 campaign with the IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship in New Zealand in mid-December.

But that plan was ended by the crash, as he explained at the time: “I was really excited to do 70.3 Worlds but unfortunately last week I crashed pretty hard on my bike.

“Nothing is broken but I’m still quite banged up so I’ve decided to call it a season and rest up for a successful 2025!”

That means Sanders ended the year with three victories to his name – at 70.3 Oceanside, 70.3 Mont Tremblant and IRONMAN Canada. 

MRI reveals fracture

But a couple of months on and it turns out that bike crash was more serious than first thought.

For this week, in his first workout video in a while on YouTube, Sanders revealed: “I took an off-season – not by choice, but by crashing.

“Originally I thought it was nothing serious but then it didn’t really get better very quickly so I went for an MRI and turns out I’d fractured my hip. So a forced stop to the season.”

Back on track

But things are now ramping up – as you’ll see if you watch the video which is embedded below.

And Sanders explained how he’s worked his way back to full fitness: “So slowly getting back into things took most of January as base training, nothing really higher intensity than let’s say, bottom of threshold. [I] put in a decent amount of volume.

“And now mid-February we’re getting back to some VO2, some high-end work.”

All of which means we should see him back in race action soon, with a defence of his IRONMAN 70.3 Oceanside title on April 5 a potential start point.