From Ironman to Impact: My Story... So Far

Jonny Sammut is the founder of Ogging, an Australian endurance coaching business. A former elite triathlete who represented Australia, he was critically injured racing IRONMAN Western Australia in December 2024. Nineteen surgeries and twelve blood transfusions later, this is where he's at.

I looked down at my power meter for about a second.

That was it. That was the whole thing. December 2024, IRONMAN Western Australia, and I was as fit as I'd ever been. Off the swim, on the bike, hunting Nick's wheel. I glanced down, misjudged the roundabout, and went into a give-way sign at 52km/h.

I remember my leg collapsing under me. I remember looking back and seeing it mangled, bones through the skin, and not understanding what I was looking at. My shoe had come off and for a second I thought my foot had gone with it. I screamed for help and then I begged for the green whistle.

The ambulance took twenty minutes to get to me, weaving through a course still full of athletes. Then a helicopter to Perth. Then a surgeon telling me I might lose the leg, and that if things went badly, the leg was not the worst of it.

Before that

If you'd asked me a few years earlier what defined me, I'd have said triathlon and not thought twice.

I came up through the short-course ranks, raced World Cups, ticked off results that looked good on paper. Something was always missing though. Even on the best days there was this feeling that I could be doing more.

Covid shut the sport down in 2020 and gave me time I didn't know I needed. I was training for the Rottnest Channel Swim just to stay sane, and just before the crossing I had a severe reaction to the Pfizer vaccine and was diagnosed with myocarditis. My cardiologist said no training, no racing, six months minimum. At the time it felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

So I put the energy into study instead. Wrote a thesis on AI in healthcare, ended up graduating as valedictorian at UWA, then two years at Deloitte in supply chain and procurement. Almost everything I know about running a business, I learned from that team.

But I couldn't leave the sport alone. What had started as a side quest with mates, a few of us calling ourselves Ogging Squad, had quietly turned into something people wanted to be part of. Helping mates who'd never done a triathlon get to a start line gave me something racing never had. That's when the coaching business started properly.

Being around it pulled me back in. Heart cleared, I entered Sunshine Coast 70.3 in 2024 with no real expectations and finished 4th. Sydney Marathon the week after in 2:35. Ironman Malaysia four weeks after that. I started to think I could actually do this full-time, race the world alongside Nick as he climbed the pro ranks.

Sunshine Coast 70.3, Sydney Marathon, Ironman Malaysia. Twelve weeks.

Then Busselton.

Three months in hospital

Open femur fracture. External fixators. Rods. Compartment syndrome. Severe infection. DRESS syndrome, which is a drug reaction that can kill you on its own. Nineteen surgeries and counting. Twelve blood transfusions.

Then the conversation I still think about.

They sat me down and told me I had a decision to make. Amputate, and get on with a known outcome. Or try to salvage the leg, with no guarantee it would ever be a useful limb, and a long road either way to find out.

I was terrified. I didn't have the information to make that call and there was no version of it that felt good. But I couldn't bring myself to give the leg away while there was still a chance of keeping it. So I chose salvage, and I've been living inside that decision ever since.

There was a night in there where I told my dad I didn't want to keep going. I'm not going to dress that up. What got me out the other side was my family in the room and the messages coming in from people outside it. Friends, athletes, and a lot of people I'd never met.

Where I'm at

It's been about twenty months. Nineteen surgeries so far and two more in the next couple of months, which will make it twenty-one. The lengthening is done, 7cm added back into the tibia, and I'm still a centimetre short. Amputation is still a conversation rather than a closed door.

I don't have a neat ending for you. I don't know if I keep the leg. I don't know what I'll be able to do with it if I do.

What I do know is that movement is a privilege. Choosing to be in pain is a privilege. Getting to train, race, and hurt yourself in a session on purpose is something a lot of people would swap almost anything for. I understood that as an idea before. I understand it differently now.

What Ogging became

Here's the part I didn't expect.

I couldn't train, couldn't race, and couldn't do most of what I'd built my identity on. So I put everything into the one thing I could still do, which was help other people move.

Ogging Coaching now looks after 200 athletes across Australia, with roughly 16 coaches working across triathlon, running and cycling. There's a track club, a cycle club, and Ogging Apparel. Two years ago it was a handful of mates in Perth.

The accident changed how we coach, not just how much. When you've had your ability to move taken off you without warning, you stop treating an athlete's season as the point. Consistency over heroics. Athletes who are still here in three years, not athletes who had one great block and broke. Coaches who pick up the phone when someone's life goes sideways, because sometimes it does.

That's the whole thing, really. Performance doesn't need pretence. It needs someone who actually cares whether you're alright.

The road ahead

My story isn't wrapped up with a bow and it might not be for a while.

But I'm here, and I'd rather spend this chapter helping other people chase something than waiting to find out what happens to my leg.

If you're chasing something and you'd like a hand with it, come find us.

— Jonny

If any of this is close to home, Lifeline is 13 11 14.