Olympic swimming legend Ryan Lochte and his wife Kayla shared an Instagram reel this week showing clips of his road to recovery after near-fatal car crash almost a year ago.
The video, posted Wednesday, opens with a clip of Lochte, 40, in a wheelchair and his son wheeling him into a house decorated for Christmas.
It then flashes to a clip of Lochte struggling to walk with a walker while wearing a hospital gown, followed by another of him in a doctor’s office showing stitches that run almost the length of his thigh, from his hip to his knee.
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The final clip shows Lochte jogging with a slight limp through a sunny neighborhood.
“Life’s setbacks may knock you down, but they set the stage for an even stronger comeback!” the caption said.
“This guy has been putting in the work one step at a time, literally!”
Lochte wrote: “Rome wasn’t built in a day! Everyday try and get better. Still a ways away. If you’re not trying to better yourself each day then what’s the point! Happy hump day.”
Kayla added: “From a wheelchair to a walker to crutches, to one crutch, to being able to run … in less than a year.”
Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medallist, discussed the crash on the Athletes Only podcast with host Kyle Millis in January but a portion of the episode was held back until Lochte was “fully recovered and back to 100 per cent”.
In the interview, Lochte said the accident, which occurred in November, “took me for a doozy”.
He said he still was having nightmares a month after the crash and was fearful to get into the car to go into physical therapy appointments.
Through tears, Lochte said he still has visions of white lights flashing and “not knowing that I’d wake up and see my family again”.
“But now when I wake up, I’m so thankful,” Lochte said. “In the blink of an eye, your life can be over.”
Lochte said he was driving to pick up his kids from school, headed down a four-lane street, when the car in front of him swerved to avoid a garbage truck parked in the middle of the road.
When Lochte also tried to swerve out of the way, he hit the garbage truck.
Police, investigators, others on the road and friends nearby all stopped what they were doing to come to Lochte’s aid, he said, adding that they thought he wasn’t breathing and had died.
Lochte said he “completely broke my femur in half” and that there was blood gushing out of gashes in his head. His car — a Ford truck, that Lochte affectionately called “a beast” — was totalled.
“Thank God that I only had a broken femur and a couple stitches,” Lochte said, adding that he still struggles to walk but that he’s in physical therapy for his injuries.
Lochte said one of the investigators later told him typically with similar accidents he has to go to the hospital and either handcuff the crash victim to the bed because they had been drinking or tell the victim’s relatives they had died.
“I guess I’m a cat that has nine lives,” Lochte said with a chuckle.
“It’s a bump in the road, a huge bump in the road, but I got to keep moving forward.”
Lochte won six gold medals, three silver and three bronze across four Olympics.
His extraordinary Olympic career ended in controversy after an incident on a night out at Rio 2016, while in 2018 he received an anti-doping ban.
– with 7NEWS