🚍 The bloke got hit by a bus.
Figuratively and repeatedly so for the best part of two years by injury, illness and, well, life.
Then literally. Literally hit by a bus, knocked clean off his bike on the eve of his comeback race during a final, light training spin on Friday.
To confront all that and still pick himself up off the metaphorical canvas and unforgiving pavement in Saint-Raphaël-Fréjus and somehow claim a spot on the podium at T100 French Riviera shows the true character of Kyle Smith.
The Taupō 29-year-old is back, finally the seer of light after reaching some dark places in recent times.
A US$30,000 (NZ$52,876) payday for third behind pal Hayden Wilde and Belgian Jelle Geens was timely considering his day job hasn’t been a great return on training investment during the past 24 months or so. But it’s the psychological relief, after being diagnosed with *Coeliac disease, breaking his collarbone and battling personal issues that is the richest reward.
“I’m super happy with that,” Smith said before adding the context.
“Four months ago, I was sort of in the hospital battling stomach issues and honestly, probably staring down the barrel of retirement because I just never thought I’d come back to this level.
“I lost all the belief that I’d ever come back. I was that unfit.”
To say friends and family is all it took to finally out run the funk would be to downplay the internal demons Smith had to battle, much less the hard yards in the high passes of Andorra training alongside Wilde, his friendly rival since childhood. But it was a decisive factor.
“Thanks to good friends and people around me who really supported me, mainly Hayden actually…”
“He is one of my best mates, and Jan and Emma Frodeno, who were just my sort of life raft to get me through some tough times. And Jan just said, ‘What happens if you believe in yourself?’
“Apparently this.”
“This” was Smith’s first podium since a purple patch in 2024 when he was at the very pointy end of the PTO world rankings following victory at Challenge Wanaka, The Challenge Championship in Samorin, a pair of T100 best silver medals in San Fran and London before back-to-back 4th placings at T100 Dubai and the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in his hometown.
But it all went south from there, the Kiwi slumping to a world ranking of 354th. That’ll get a positive lift when the PTO recalculates the standings this week, another pay off for one of his career-best days.
“You have no idea how much this result means to me or what it means in my career. When you have two bad years, people start questioning your ability and like you’ve got mortgages to pay and a lot riding on results like this. So I finally can say that I’m back and it wasn’t the smoothest ride.
“I also got hit by a bus yesterday and came off and really hurt myself. So I spent four hours yesterday on the physio table just getting myself back right. And just before the race, having my neck, I woke up so sore this morning, feeling a bit like dizzy and whatever. But I just thought the proverbial ‘screw it’ and I’m just going to send it and see what happens. I just backed myself, believed in myself because there was so much riding on the result today, and I just never wavered from that belief in myself today.”
After Wilde and Smith gapped Geens on lap four of six on the deciding 18km run, it looked as though Smith was on target for at least his equal best T100 result. But Wilde was imperious, and right at the death Geens found another gear to pip Smith by five seconds.
It mattered not in the greater scheme of things. Silver would have been sweet and Smith really tried to hang on but bronze, in the context of the past two years, was no less satisfying.
So, tell us Kyle, how low did you go?
“Honestly, in my career and personal life outside of my career, I was pretty rock bottom and now this feels like I’m almost back at the top,” Smith continued.
“I felt like I needed this result and nothing was gonna stop me, not even getting hit by a bus would stop me! There’s quite a beauty in being at rock bottom because there’s only one way to go and that’s up. So I’ve just been riding that momentum and riding that wave for the last three months.”
It’s no coincidence that Smith has spent much of those three months at his new training base in Andorra, giving as good as he got from Wilde in training.
“Me and Hayden, we’re a week apart in age. We’re both from the other side of the world, and we’ve grown up together and we’ve raced the circuit together. I feel like we’ve sort of gone on our paths, but I went up to Andorra because I thought that would be a good fit for me and my training. I started training with Hayden and we just got along like a house on fire and the training really worked as well.
“I think our personalities both really gel off each other, and I think we found a good recipe for what’s to come.”
During a promo shoot before T100 French Riviera, Smith and Wilde riffed off each other after a light training swim. Wilde warned Smith was back in good nick and both played along half-pie mocking the “Norwegian method” made famous by Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden and lately Casper Stornes.
Forget the “Scandinavian method”, as Wilde, the freshly minted Ironman 70.3 world champion kept saying to the camera. How about the Kiwi method?
After the Wilde-Smith 1-3 on the Côte d’Azur, that’s a stock we’re buying. Wilde’s on top of the mid-distance world and Smith is back.
There’s no denying the Kiwi method now.
Ed’s note: Coeliac disease is a permanent autoimmune condition where your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body when you eat gluten, damaging the lining of your small intestine.
