World champs beckon after horrific car crash
Olivia Ritchie recalls the moment she couldn’t feel her legs.
The road ice was black, the van had rolled, and panic set in. The up-and-coming athlete laid terrified and in pain, showered in broken glass, only able to use her arms to get out of the upturned vehicle.
June 17 was meant to be an enjoyable day. A short drive with her husband and sister from Tekapo to Aoraki/Mt Cookfor a scenic helicopter flight, had turned horrific.
While her relatives were OK, Ritchie was flown to Christchurch Hospital – not the helicopter ride she had expected – where she was told she had broken and dislocated her back and a vertebrae was pressing on her spinal cord.
“There’s life before this moment and life after, and they could be looking quite different,” Ritchie told herself at the time.
Her life before involved dreaming of being a successful runner – a dream she’d had since she was a child.
The 29-year-old Christchurch athlete competed at national level track events and received a running scholarship to Stony Brook University in New York in 2013.
Returning to New Zealand three years later, Ritchie moved into triathlon racing as she loved to swim and wanted a new challenge. She competed in multiple Ironman events, always placing close to the top of her age group, and qualified to represent her country at world triathlon championships. “Last year my goal was to jump into the pro[fessional] category but then this injury obviously set things back a bit,” she said. “My surgeon came up to me and told me I could potentially think about Paralympics, that might be an option for me, and I think I was supposed to be happy about that but I wasn’t.”
Enter nine months of rehab and recovery following surgery.
Ritchie learned how to walk again. She went from gaining the tiniest amount of movement in her toes, to doing laps of the hospital ward, to now qualifying for the half Ironman World Championships in Taupō in December. “I didn't even know I could get to the start line, let alone finish well enough to [qualify],” she said.
Regaining muscle and conditioning has been Ritchie’s challenge since she started training again in January.
Her first triathlon in January, in Corsair Bay near Christchurch, was a “very emotional day”, full of relief and gratitude to be back in the sport.
“It has been really hard and there were definitely some quite low points early on, just with the uncertainty,” she said.
“I work in mental health myself so it was a case of applying some of the things I use in my work for myself [like] setting little goals.”
Her efforts have been hailed by her husband, Carl Ritchie, as “miraculous” and “gutsy”, and she said it wouldn’t have happened with him there “every step of the way”, alongside family, health teams and her supportive Christchurch running club, Don Greig Racing Stables.
Ritchie’s back is “still pretty sore” and she jokes she’s “still struggling” with perfecting her biking skills after a long career of running and swimming.
The Ironman and Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Taupō take place on December 14 and 15.