Rebuilt: Johnny Waddell On the Head Injury That Transformed Him From Top World Cup Racer to Endurance Athlete

Johnny Waddell has been to some of the farthest corners of our sport, and he’s still here to tell us all about it. Those who mountain biked in the late ‘90s and early 2000s may remember Johnny as one of the top World Cup downhill racers. A bad crash at Monte-Sainte-Anne in 2003 interrupted his momentum, leaving him with a severe head injury that kept him in a coma for 26 days. After returning to Australia and to consciousness, he relearned how to walk, talk, and ride a bike. Returning to bike racing after that type of head injury would be unlikely for most, but mountain biking is what Waddell knows and loves. The way he describes it, he was coming back no matter what. Over the roughly two decades since that head injury, Johnny has transitioned into endurance racing and has found success in solo 12- and 24-hour races. I love his ability to keep moving forward and enjoyed hearing his hard-earned perspective.

The Rebuilt interview series aims to tell the stories of riders who have had life-changing injuries. Find the other Rebuilt articles here.

---

By the way, thanks so much for recommending I talk to Grant Allen. I think he seems awesome.

Yeah, when I started freeriding, Grant Allen was just right up there and he was an awesome rider. The injury he had was massive and the fact that he pushed through his injury to come out strong, that kind of reevaluates who he is, I love that.

Yeah, it really seems like he’s able to be positive about it and not dwell on the hard parts. To just look at it and just keep putting one foot in front of the other and make it work, that’s just so cool.

And I love that. Life-changing injuries, they do that. They will knock you right down, but if you dwell on that you’re not really going to go anywhere. But if you push through it, then you’re going to be a better person. Your personality will be just next-level.

Yeah, it’s been so interesting to talk to people who have been through it. What about you? Who were you as a mountain biker before you crashed? And how did you get there?

I've done it forever. I started racing mountain bikes in the early '90s and then just, I love the sport. I started just getting better and better. I started racing national races and international races and just pushing myself and signing different contracts and just keep going, step by step. Yes, there's been quite a few injuries, but if you just don't dwell on it and just go forward step by step then you'll get through it and come out the other side.

What was different about this head injury? Or was that kind of same thing? Was it just coming out the side?

Yeah, that was different. Okay, so that was a massive injury.

Going back a bit: what happened?

I overcleared the final jump at Mont-Sainte-Anne. It was a 65-foot jump and I overcleared it and started to nose dive. I had to bail, I was just winding down the windows just bailing off the bike and yeah, hit my head and went into a coma for 26 days. I was in hospital in Quebec and right through stimuli doctors could see that I was coming out so they wanted to get me home. To get me home on the plane, they put me in an induced coma. And then that was the day that I came out of the coma when I arrived back in Perth in western Australia.

Wow, how did recovery go for you from there? What was the timeline of all of it?

I had to walk and talk all over again. Just walking, like walking up steps without a handrail, is just a massive skill and you don't really realize that because we just do it every day. But then initially, it was a massive step for me just to walk upstairs without a handrail. It's hard to say, it's such a big journey.

What changes have been ongoing still? Have things still been changing or kind of stabilized?

Yeah, no, everything's pretty good but I feel that there is always slight changes every year or so. They'll be improvements, improvements with my riding and just how I handle things. There’s nothing really in particular that holds me back.

When did you see the most progress through your recovery? Were there certain years that things felt like they were getting a lot better or more stable?

I guess it would have been years and years ago back in hospital and you're just sort of improving so quickly. I guess it's just the initial steps. Just walking, talking, riding. Getting back on the bike.

Yeah, what was that like first getting back on the bike after getting hurt?

I was good. I love it. I’ve done it all my life, so it’s kind of like, riding’s easier than walking to a certain degree.

Did you still feel that way after you got hurt?

Yeah, definitely. I still love it. I still love jumps. I still love riding trails and hitting rock gardens.

That is so cool. How did it feel when you first started to go back to some downhill racing?

My first two races back were downhill races, because that’s pretty much all I knew. I just raced downhill and I was pretty back in the field. So I had to reevaluate everything that I was doing. I just realized that I don’t have the mentality and the willpower to be a downhill racer. I still had a really good work ethic and I just built myself up as an endurance athlete, long distance, like 24-hour racing.

When you did go back to some downhill racing, were you able to hang with the field or were you really off the back?

At the beginning, yeah, off the back. There’s so many things you’ve got to learn. Maybe not now because I’ve been mountain biking for ages, but yeah, initially, it was off the back.

Did things change a lot for you when you got more into endurance riding? Was your approach to training and racing different?

No, I was always just pushing myself.

Just kind of seeing what you could do.

I love racing. I love the drive to just push myself.

It sounds like you weren't totally foreign to getting hurt. You said you broke your neck in two places before – what happened with that?

I went to America for the first time in ‘98. And less than 24 hours after arriving home back to Australia, I raced a state championship where I had an off and broke my neck in two places. Luckily, it was a stable break. I was stuck in a halo, had it bolted to my head for a number of months, but luckily it was a stable break.

How much time did you have to take off the bike?

I should have images of me doing monos on my bike with my halo on. Which isn't very safe… but that’s me. So I did get back on the bike and as I was getting better just kept training and then going back to the States straight away in ‘99. Then just kept going from there.

And then you also saw Tarek Rasouli get injured. What was that like for you?

Okay, I'm a true believer that what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger. Tarek is from Munich, Germany. I was a downhill racer, and it was right at the start of when freeriding was becoming an in thing. Freeriding was getting big in Canada and North America. Santa Cruz Bicycles sent me up to Canada to Calgary to do some filming with Cranked – with Bjorn Enga and Cranked Movies. I did that around Kamloops in 2002. I was doing it with Tarek Rasouli, who was a freerider from Munich, Germany. They got big bulldozers and were making massive jumps for us around Sun Peaks and Kamloops. I was filming with Tarek and we had finished filming for the day and were riding down and said “Yeah, let’s go check out these jumps that are being made.”

Yeah, so Tarek went first. He overshot a big hip jump that had been made. And came down, and it was just the worst sound that I’d ever heard. He’s been in a wheelchair ever since. Through his injury, he has showed how strong he is. He has created a massive organization, Rasoulution. Creating freeriding events around the world as well.

It seems like he's managed to come out of it just with so much creativity. That wouldn't be the automatic way for most people getting through, but he's managed to stay in the bike world and just approach it in a new way, which seems really cool.

Yeah, definitely. I love what he's done. He has a lot of people with him that are helping him and doing a lot of things behind the scenes, but he’s the one that's sort of created it.

Yeah, that's really cool. I got to talk to him a few months ago and he's actually the person who recommended I talk to you. Did you understand before seeing it that an injury could change someone's career and life so much, or was that a new thing for you to see?

There was a new thing. A lot of people would think “Oh, so if somebody has such a big injury, doesn’t that make you take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing?” I guess it should, but I can’t help it, I keep going and keep pushing myself.

What was your mindset coming out of that?

To be honest I was so self-absorbed, I was still in the scene. That’s just what I was doing. I didn’t think about anything else. I guess it’s selfish maybe, just thinking about what you’re doing, yourself, but yeah, I was just thinking about myself and what I was doing. I guess I was kind of selfish.

Sure, I wouldn't describe that as selfish. I think that's pretty much the way athletes have to think to succeed at the top. It makes sense. Did it change how you thought about the possibility of yourself getting hurt?

To be honest, no, I don't know. It's just… a lot of things suck, but you know, just keep pushing.

When you did end up getting your head injury, did it feel like a similar life-changing thing to paralysis or not so much? You are still able to come back and you are still someone who's really determined in biking and able to succeed at it.

I was just focused on putting one step forward and learning basics, right from the start. I learned how to walk and talk all over again. So I was just learning all the basics and the steps you take to succeed in racing.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think sometimes when you're in it, you can't really zoom out too much to look at the whole picture because you just had to focus so much on the details.

Yeah, right.

When did you start endurance racing?

I did my first 24-hour race back in 2006, just to see if I could. Just seeing if I could complete 24-hour racing. And then I did, and then I just got the drive to push myself. The following year, 2007, I raced the 24-hour World Championships again. That was in Laguna Seca in Northern California. Santa Cruz Bicycles helped me get over to that. I actually finished on the podium, I was the sixth person in the elite category, so that was beyond my expectations.

What kept you coming back to keep doing more of them?

It was good. I love the drive. I'll always keep coming back because I love pushing myself to the next level.

Have you continued doing kind of the same style of 24-hour races since then or have you shifted?

I’ve shifted a little bit. I've done a few races like Gravity Enduro, and I’ve been doing quite a few gravel races. That’s been another little push.

You mentioned recently doing a gravel race that seemed like it turned into kind of a crazy story. Could you tell me the story of that?

No. [laughs]

Fair enough!

No, it was a long-distance gravel rice. I had a mechanical and I didn’t want to give up. Even though I should have. I kept pushing myself and riding on a part of my bike that I couldn’t really ride on. I ended up coming off after another 120km. I can’t really explain it that well. I just had quite a few stitches and was in hospital for a couple of days. That’s just one of those things that you go through.

It seems like you've really figured out how to dig deep and push yourself farther than most people would naturally push themselves. Is that naturally who you are or is that a skill you learned through your injury?

I think it's kind of a learning process. And yes, you can’t teach somebody how to get over injuries. If you’re strong enough and if you’re fit enough, you’ll get over injuries pretty quickly, I guess. Don’t let the injury hold you have. Just keep moving forward.

I think it really looks like you’ve figured out how to keep moving forward. Kind of indefinitely, I guess.

I love it. I love riding, I love racing off-road. I’ll just keep pushing myself. I’ve got companies that support me still and yeah, I’ll just keep pushing.

How would you describe your whole relationship with bikes now? And what place they have in your life?

I work in a bike shop now, so I sell bikes, I talk about bikes. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

You’re a bike person. I guess some of these questions are selfish because I'm recovering from my own head injury, which both similar and different. I was in a coma for less time than you but I now mostly can't mountain bike anymore. And so it's just incredibly cool to hear about how someone else has continued moving forward from something that I'm still in the early phases of.

So you can't mountain bike anymore?

Not how it used to be. I go on things that are technically mountain bike rides, but easy trails.

Yeah, that’s interesting what you say. My thought process is different from that. I always have so much drive to just keep pushing myself, nothing will stop me.

Which is really admirable for sure. It's interesting and great being able to push through.

I've done it all my life because I've got that drive. I feel as though I owe people but I don't owe people. I am always pushing myself. Companies like Red Bull and Santa Cruz Bicycles have really pushed. They’ve went out of their way to push me, they’re enabling me. I respect that so I feel like I’ve got to push myself to say thanks.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I just love pushing myself anyway.

It seems like a dynamic that is probably there for a lot of riders who aren't injured, but then just comes into sharper focus and is more present once you're injured. It kind of puts the spotlight on what you're doing and whether or not you're racing and all of that. What's the best advice you have for other people who have similar injuries?

Just stay positive. Hang around with people that are supportive. And just keep a smile on your face. Be happy. Just don't let things get you down. Stay with some sort of level of positivity. If you’re positive, you’ll come out the other side.



A whole life lived from then until now, and he's still going strong. Johnny, thanks so much for taking the time to let us know what you're up to. We're looking forward to seeing what you can do in the future!

Posted In:
Interviews Rebuilt