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.