‘My kneecap was halfway up my thigh’: How Sam came back from the brink

Source : ABC NEWS

Sam Williamson apologises as he ducks away for brief moment.

His six-month-old golden retriever puppy, Alfred, is doing what golden retriever puppies tend to do — going absolutely berserk at a momentary disruption to its immediate environment.

Some wry but affectionate complaining about the 28-year-old’s new companion follows upon his swift return.

“I read somewhere that a golden retriever’s fight or flight response is to try and make friends,” he tells ABC Sport from his home in Melbourne, speaking in such a way that you can imagine he and the offending pup staring at each other as he talks.

“He’s a bundle of joy,” Williamson continues.

“Just a welcome breath of fresh air and one of the more beautiful things that came out of last year.”

“Last year” — two words that hang oppressively in the air, describing a time like a weighted blanket thrown over the career trajectory of one of Australia’s most impressive swimmers in recent years.

Heading into the 2025 World Championship Trials, Williamson was flying high.

He came within 0.02 seconds of his own Australian record to comfortably win the 50-metre breaststroke, and doubled up by winning the 100m as well.

Everything seemed to be gearing up for the swimmer to be ideally placed to retain the world title he won in Doha in 2024.

Then, disaster.

“I was in the gym doing a warm-up that I’d done for the last four years,” Williamson recalls.

“Just a very, very regular Wednesday afternoon training session.

“And unfortunately, just a complete freak accident.

“I just put my foot down in the wrong spot before I went to take off for a jump and never left the floor.”

The result was devastating.

‘Am I actually going to be able to do this again?’

Williamson immediately knew that this wasn’t a straightforward injury, the evidence before his eyes was almost too horrendous to believe.

“I completely ruptured my patella tendon, tore it just from one side to the other of my kneecap and then also tore it completely off the VMO [vastus medialis oblique, a part of the quad muscle in the thigh],” he says.

“I was lying on my back clutching at my knee, but my kneecap was about halfway up my thigh.

“It certainly wasn’t something you want to look down and see. I’m glad only a few people saw just how bad it was.”

Williamson is so disarmingly affable that an ironic comment he made about Alfred earlier in our conversation comes roaring back into focus.

“He’s about as athletically gifted on land as I am, I guess,” Williamson said, a comment so self-deprecating and delivered with such humour that you didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling down at the excitable pup at his feet.

Yet so horrendous was the injury he suffered on that Wednesday morning in April, that to joke about it seems crass. No amount of humour would be able to mask how serious an injury it could have been — not only for his career, but his ability to go about his day-to-day life.

“For me, it would have been a 48-hour period where I was concerned that swimming was completely out of the question,” Williamson says.

“There was a genuine reality of, am I actually going to be able to do this again, let alone walk again?”

Fortunately, Williamson was treated immediately.

He credits the “incredible” team at the Victorian Institute of Sport (VIS) with getting him straight onto the path to recovery.

“I saw a doctor within 30 minutes of me doing it. I had an MRI scan booked for that night and then was booked in for surgery within 24 hours,” Williamson says.

“Coming out of surgery Friday morning after spending 36 hours contemplating, am I even going to be able to swim again, to have a surgeon walk in and say something along the lines of, he’s been doing this for 25 years now and it was one of the worst he’s ever seen, but we’re going to get you back to the Comm Games next year.

“Just hearing that the surgeon had faith in me, that I’d be able to get back and hearing that the team I was working with believed in me, that was all I needed.

“I was back in the gym four days out of surgery.”

The VIS continued its support after his surgery, while Williamson’s partner Linnea moved over from Sweden to help look after him during some difficult months of rehab.

“If it wasn’t for those people, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am today,” he says.

“But it’s because of those incredible people around me that I can comfortably say I’m in a better position than I was when I got injured.

“I am mentally and physically stronger than I was when I was injured.”

The countdown, the motivation and the pain

Williamson made his competitive return at the Victorian state titles, swimming a hugely creditable 27.08 for 50 breast, in what was an emotional return to the pool.

“It’s [wasn’t] winning any world titles, but in season it’s not an awful time to throw down, considering six months before that swim I still wasn’t walking by myself,” Williamson notes.

That swim had taken on a disproportionate degree of importance for Williamson — in the VIS gym he trained in for hours every day during his rehab, a clock counting down the days to that return was prominently displayed, and had begun ticking down just days after he went under the knife.

That provided motivation aplenty. But even while Williamson was still constrained by his crutches, still humbled by his reduced physical capabilities, he was driven by the knowledge that someone, somewhere, was training.

“Every single day, there’s someone else out there in the world training right now,” Williamson says.

“Somewhere there’s someone in Australia who’s seen me miss out. There’s someone in Australia thinking, ‘Sam’s not back on the team this year, that’s spot’s up for grabs.’

“There’s somebody out there in the world right now saying, ‘Sam’s not here to defend his title, that title’s up for grabs.’

“That was what got me out of bed every single morning.

“There is no more powerful driver than sitting on the couch watching what should have been you.”

That’s not to say the process was easy.

Williamson says watching the trials in Adelaide was “one of the lowest points” he has experienced.

Watching the World Championships in Singapore was even worse.

“Watching the race at Singapore was one of the many times I was sort of brought to tears throughout the entire rehab journey,” Williamson recalls, the residual pain breaking through, becoming evident in his voice.

“At that point, I still couldn’t do anything unaided.

“I was just getting off crutches, I couldn’t drive myself anywhere, I was in a brace for 24 hours a day — I was only allowed to take it off to have a shower.

“And even that, I needed help to get in and out of the shower. There’s something incredibly humbling about sitting on the floor in the shower, looking at a leg that used to be two or three times the size it was just sort of wasting away to nothing.

“Sitting there and seeing what everybody else was accomplishing at that moment was devastating.”

That being said, it provided genuine motivation.

“It got me off the couch,” Williamson says.

“If I had been sitting on the couch watching world champs, having swam and missed out [at the the trials] knowing that, at that moment, that was what I was capable of and perhaps this year I wasn’t capable of making the Australian team, that’s a different story.

“But to have to sit there and watch, knowing everything I’d done had been right, up until that moment … this just isn’t fair, it’s devastating.

“But you know what, as my hero, ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage says, ‘the cream rises to the top’, and that’s where I’m going.”

While Williamson is focused on rising back to the top of the pile and winning gold in the pool, his attention is somewhat diverted to something else lightly rising into a different type of golden hue in his oven.

In fact, Williamson’s return to competitive action will be greeted as warmly by those looking forward to him swimming as it will be by those looking to sample some of his famous home-made hot cross buns — although he can’t promise that he’ll have too many spare.

“There’s a line out the door,” Williamson says when asked if he has been swamped for orders ahead of the Australian Nationals.

“I’ve always loved cooking. Some of my earliest memories are cooking — just being in the kitchen with mum, making a cake or being at my nan’s house and baking a cake or baking morning tea.

“I think cooking is where I am at my most comfortable.

“It’s where I’m at my happiest and, you know, cooking for the people I love. It’s one of my favourite things in the world to do.

“I’d like to think I’ve diversified [what I bake] a little bit, however, the hot cross buns are one of the things I’m most famous for.”

Racing for Australia ‘one of the most beautiful things about the sport’

That might be true among the swimming community, but Williamson wants to be known for his swimming first and foremost, starting with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow later this year.

Williamson first announced himself as a genuine star of Australian swimming at the Birmingham 2022 Games, winning four medals: a silver medal in the 50m breaststroke, behind world-record-holder Adam Peaty; gold in the 4x100m mixed medley relay; silver in the 4x100m medley relay; and bronze in the 100m breaststroke.

The proud Victorian — who has resisted a call to train in the Queensland sun in order to stay in Melbourne — notes it’s “incredibly disappointing” that the Games will not be held in his home state.

“Being a homegrown athlete at a homegrown Games would have been the best marketing opportunity since the invention of cereal,” he says.

“I’m going to have to wait until Brisbane now to have that opportunity to get a Games on home soil.

“I would have loved the idea of having my grandparents and all my family in the stands cheering me on and watching me. But, you know, now that it’s a 24-hour, one-way flight just to get over to the UK, that’s not necessarily feasible for everyone in my family.

“It is a real shame that it won’t be here in Melbourne, but, you know what? It’s swimming, and if it’s 50 metres long and there’s water in it, I’ve got a job to do and I’m just going to put my best foot forward and do that job.”

Putting the disappointment of missing out on a home Games and the benefits that would have entailed aside, Williamson says the Commonwealth Games is hugely important to him, and he is desperate to cap his injury return with a medal haul in Scotland.

“The Commonwealth Games will always hold a really, really special place in my heart,” he says earnestly, the pride he feels in representing Australia on the world stage coming across in spades.

“Comm Games was the first team I missed out on back in 2018. I missed out on making the team by less than half a second, I think, and spent the next four years working towards that goal again.

“The 2022 Commonwealth Games was the first time I had the opportunity to represent Australia and it was the first time I got to do what I really loved on the world stage.”

Williamson says there is something beautiful about walking out behind the blocks and seeing the word “Australia” next to your name.

“When you compete domestically, you’ve got three letters that denote the club you swim for, but when you compete internationally, it’s three letters that denote the country that you swim for, and I think that is one of the most beautiful things about the sport,” he says.

“In that moment, I realised that I was no longer swimming for myself, but I was swimming for the seven-year-old in me that had the dream of doing this sport and doing something for Australia.

“I think that was really special, and that’s something that will always stick with me.

“So coming back four years later and having the chance to hopefully cement myself on that … Commonwealth Games team for a second time, and just getting another chance to represent Australia, it’s like a dream come true.”