Olympic champion Ryan Lochte has revealed he was in a severe car accident last winter that left him with serious injuries.
Lochte, 40, shared that he has spent the last 10 months recovering from a crash last November that broke his ‘femur in half.’
The six-time gold medalist crashed into a truck while on his way to pick up his children – Caiden Zane, 7, and Liv Rae, 5 – from school, he recently told host Kyle Mills on his Athletes Only podcast.
The swimmer, who represented Team USA in four Olympics, explained that a trash truck had been parked in the middle of a busy four-lane street with no lights or cones to indicate that it had stopped.
The car in front of Lochte managed to swerve but the athlete wasn’t successful in avoiding the vehicle and ‘ran into the damn thing.’
Friends and fellow parents who witnessed the incident ran to his rescue and thought he had died.
‘They’re like, “He’s dead. He’s not breathing. He’d dead,”‘ he said. ‘Blood gushing from my head. Still have a couple stiches in there. Broke my femur. Completely broke my femur in half. Totaled my car.’
Lochte and wife Kayla, 33, who share three children – Caiden, Liv and one-year-old Georgia June – recently opened up on the ordeal.
The couple shared a joint Instagram post captioned: ‘Life’s setbacks may knock you down, but they set the stage for an even stronger comeback!’
The post included a video showing Lochte’s road to recovery, beginning with a clip of the retired swimmer being pushed in a wheelchair into the family’s home by son Caiden.
The video cuts to a snippet of Lochte in a hospital gown with visible abrasions on his forehead as he takes tentative steps with the help of a walker as a physio therapist watches on.
The swimmer then shows a graphic shot of a scar which runs almost the entire length of his hip to his knee.
‘I still have some nightmares,’ Lochte said on the podcast. ‘I still get scared when I, like, go to the car to go to my physical therapy. I still have visions of the wreck. I still have visions of white lights flashing in my eyes.’
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Lochte paused, getting emotional as he added that he struggled with ‘not knowing that I’d wake up and see my family again.’
‘In the blink of an eye, your life can be over. I’m just so thankful that no one got injured except me,’ the father-of-three added.
Lochte and Kayla’s video ends on a high note with the athlete showing off his progress as he jogs – albeit with a slight limp – down the sidewalk.
‘It’s still hard for me to walk — but I’m doing PT, my health is there, my kids are safe everyone else is safe that was in the truck,’ he added.
He also shared that the investigator told him that they usually have to tell relatives people had died in incidents similar to Lochte’s.
‘I guess I’m a cat that has nine lives,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what life I’m on now.’
‘It’s a bump in the road — a huge bump in the road,’ he said, ‘But I have to keep moving forward.’
Lochte has courted controversy throughout his career in the pool and his reputation has taken a hit in recent years.
First he ignited international controversy by claiming he and three teammates were robbed at gunpoint after a drunken night out during the 2016 Rio Games.
Later it was revealed that the armed men turned were actually security guards and several details of Lochte’s story proved to be fabricated. He was ultimately charged with submitting a false report to police, but charges were later dismissed after he apologized.
Two years later, the US Anti-Doping agency banned Lochte for 14 months due to his use of a prohibited IV infusion – something that Lochte, himself, revealed in a social media post, which he deleted soon thereafter.
In total, Lochte faced 24 months of suspensions and has since retired following a brief return to the sport in 2021.
