STORY OF THE DECADE: From shards of glass to the last laugh

This feature first appeared in SBR’s newsletter, The Full Send

‘THEY JUST COULDN’T STOP THE BLEEDING…’

🚁 You may have caught the video clip of a young Ironman debutant shuffling across the finish line at Ironman NZ last Saturday, barely winning an awkward race with the 17-hour cut-off clock. 

The excruciating watch got us thinking. Was he a New Zealander? An Aussie. Fair dinkum. So who, then, was the tail-end Kiwi in Taupo? Rare is the Ironman back marker without a decent yarn to share. 

When we finally tracked down Amon Johnson, we got our story – and way more than we bargained for. The West Auckland construction company owner, who counted 94 seconds between his finish time and the 1am deadline, warned us so up front. 

💬 “Yeah, I’ve probably got a little bit more of an interesting story than most people,” Johnson said before regaling us with the freak accident that nearly cost him his life on the eve of last year’s ANZCO Foods Ironman NZ. 

Needless to say, gallant young Oliver Hemmings, the scraggly haired ocker who had beaten Johnson to the social media glory eight seconds earlier, doesn’t really know the meaning of pain and suffering.

We’ll get to the gory details of Johnson’s accident, a coming together of flesh and bone with plate glass window, soon. But first, a quick history lesson for context.

Saturday was Johnson’s fourth Ironman finish, a feat not to be sneezed at, yet not overly unique either. Except that his quartet have all been raced neatly 10 years apart – 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2025*,  the add on year asterisk to account for that ill-fated hotel room incident last March. 

The debut, when Johnson was a postie, came in Auckland, a swift effort of 13h 11mins. Ten years later, now a bike courier, a trend began to emerge as he finished in 13h 26min. “The other thing is, I don’t like to train. I’m not a trainer. So, the first two, I actually did no training for them at all, just riding my bike for work, a bit of walking…”

By 2014, the time had extended out to 14h 58min and finally, on Saturday, the feature worthy 16:58:26.

Here, we circle back to race eve, 2024. 

“I entered last year and I even went down and registered. Got my stickers and everything. And then I went back to pick up my bike to take it down for a racking, and I went through a plate glass window at the hotel I was staying at.

“It literally shattered and just guillotined my foot, my knee and my arm. My arm was down to the bone, my knee was down to the bone.”

All this was playing out with Johnson’s then seven-year-old twin daughters, Lily and Ella, in the room. So too, thankfully was his partner who is a nurse.

“So, I’ve got multiple lacerations, ended up having, I think around 30 or 40 stitches on my knee and then my arm and my foot as well. And they just couldn’t stop the bleeding. That was the problem. Wouldn’t stop.

“I went into shock and nearly bled out. They had to chopper me to the Rotorua surgical unit because they weren’t happy with putting me in an ambulance for an hour and a half.”

Johnson’s rehabilitation lasted the best part of seven months. That, combined with the love-hate relationship with training, accounts for his own dust-up with the cut-off clock on Saturday.

“Yeah, I kind of cut it fine, but I was always pretty confident I was going to get there. I was keeping an eye on the time and Ironman were really good. They had people on bikes coming around and giving you time splits, telling you what the pace needed to be. I wasn’t going to not get there, you know what I mean?”

So, 2034. Will you be back for more? 

“Yeah, but I have to train this time.”  

Wait, what do you mean. You don’t do training, remember?  

“It’s funny because I’m supposed to go in for a hip replacement at the end of the month. I got told in 2023 that I’ve got osteoarthritis in my hips and my left hip is just bone on bone. But I put it off because I wanted to get the Ironman done in 2024. And then of course, the accident happened, so I’m kind of long overdue for a hip replacement. I’m hoping that by then [2034] I’ll have a couple of new hips. I’ll probably need new knees by then, too.”

With the march of time, what’s with the 10-year gaps between starts? Shouldn’t you just crack on while you’ve got your health?

“When I was young you can do it because you’re young, but as you get older, it changes. It’s not necessarily just about physicality, it’s about mental attitude. 

“To do it across four decades to me is a lot more challenging, just makes it that much harder in my head.”

“I also wanted to set a good example for my daughters to show them anything is possible if you put your mind to it, regardless of the challenges that you’ve had beforehand. The whole me getting injured thing was a bit traumatic for them but I was trying to turn it into a positive experience by making sure that they came along and saw me get across the line.”

We’re delighted to report that Lily and Ella where not only there, but might just have caught the bug too. “They did the fun run the day before at Taupo, and also they’ve done their first Kiwi kids [Weetbix Tryathlon] this year,” Johnson gushed with pride over the phone, having just picked up his precious girls from school.

We’re not sure if Lily or Ella will grow up to be triathletes but we do know they have a father with an iron will to set them on the right path. We wouldn’t be surprised if we see another Johnson or two cross the finish line in 2044. 

MORE INSPIRING TALES FROM IMNZ#41

💪 If at first you fail: Justin Tito’s tenacity to keep at this triathlon lark is inspirational. His first race, 70.3 NZ in 2019, came just months after he learned to swim freestyle and while he finished, he missed the cutoff to be credited with a dreaded DNF. Back to Taupo our man went three months later to become a legit 70.3 finisher in March 2020. A step up to the full IMNZ last year coincided with choppy lake conditions that troubled even the gun age groupers. Unbowed by missing the swim cut-off, he returned last Saturday to smash the swim and finish in a tidy 14:10:07. “You are an Ironman” has rarely sounded sweeter. 

🦸‍♀️ The Works: Harriet Steele, the other Tony Jackson scholar given a helping hand to the start line in Taupo by Ironman NZ, faced even tougher odds. After receiving a shock breast cancer diagnosis 14 months ago, the Tauranga cop was rushed in for a double mastectomy, IVF treatment to harvest eggs before repeated rounds of chemotherapy, and a medical menopause. The “works” as she matter-of-factually put it. Watching IMNZ ’24 during her treatment gave her something extra to fight for and her reward was an impressive 13:26:11. Ironman? Sure, but we like sound of ‘You are a Woman of Steele’ better. 

😴 Glutton for punishment: When Shaun Rolston tells you it was the “best feeling in the world getting over that finish line” in Taupo, it came with fresh and gruelling context. The Kiwi endurance sport junkie’s 16:53:20 effort followed just a fortnight after he missed the 119km cut-off at the Tarawera Ultra-Trail by two minutes. “A bee sting in the first hour, relentless vomiting from 50km, and no food staying down—but I kept pushing. Even though I didn’t make it to the finish, this was my furthest distance yet, and I learned so much. I’ll be back. No doubt about it.” He’ll return to the trail as an Ironman. There’s no stopping him now. 

🏉 Different gravy: You don’t play 43 test matches, 104 games for Waikato, become the Chiefs’ most-capped (183 games) player, skipper the All Blacks Sevens, win two Commonwealth Games gold medals and have a 7-1-1 professional boxing record without knowing adversity intimately. But Ironman? That’s different gravy as All Black 1082 Liam Messam (pictured above) discovered after 12:17:06 of hurt in Taupo. “I wanted to test myself physically and mentally, and I certainly did that. I am never ever coming back again,” Messam said before a shout out to all those who willed him on. “The support here in Taupō was unbelievable, I don’t think the fans understand the extra energy they give us to get over the finish line.”