Olympian Tyler Smith is finally starting his recovery after complications from surgery at the end of February left him immobile for more than a week.

The triathlete was unable to leave his bed when stitches, put in place after the removal of a soft-tissue lesion, burst and left him requiring a five-night stay at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

That unscheduled period as an inpatient came quickly after Achilles and wrist surgeries, leaving Smith experiencing the most difficult recovery from injury in his career.

“I won’t go into much detail but once the stitches ripped it became quite a dire situation and has made the recovery a lot more difficult than anticipated,” Smith said.

“Staying in the hospital for five days I was at a point where I was not really moving out of bed and even when I was at home I was basically immobile for the first week.

“I’ve had good help from the home-care nurses from the hospital, who have been extraordinary in their attention to detail and ability to help me with this recovery. I want to thank them a ton.

“It’s pretty smooth now, I’m back walking around and I’m coming out of my air cast at the beginning of this week.”

As well as the physical challenge of rehabilitation, elite athletes often talk about the mental toll of injury recovery, but Smith’s pain meant his goal of reaching the top level of his sport was almost forgotten.

“It was obviously a traumatic experience and a much more difficult recovery,” Smith said.

“People talk about injuries and say it’s mentally tough and that has been my experience before, but this one has just been tough physically, especially in the early days.

“I was in the operating room three times in ten days so that’s a lot for your body to go through. This was a surgery that mentally you are so far away from racing and training that your thought process is simply ‘how am I going to get back to normal?’

“It’s not thinking about fitness and sport, it’s ‘when is this wound going to heal and when can I walk again?’

“Mentally it’s been easier because you are so far from the finish line that all pressure of racing has been removed.

“When you go through something like this it almost changes your perspective and your goalposts shift to being able to walk again, to drive around on your own again or make a meal for yourself.”

Smith’s physical recovery came from what was scheduled to be a routine operation and unconnected with his Achilles injury, which had plagued him for months.

“After trying to conservatively rehab the Achilles for getting close to nine months, there was not any reasonable improvement so we decided the surgical option was where we were at,” Smith said.

“We cleaned it up and we also found a couple of bony fragments in the front of my ankle from an old break when I was 17, getting on for a decade ago.

“All my major injuries have been on this left foot and, speaking to the experts, they say that could have been down to those fragments just affecting the foot mechanics.”

Eight weeks on from his ordeal, Smith is again looking forward to a road that he hopes will end at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and that is the only race date etched into his mind.

“There is no Olympics qualification this year and not a lot going on,” Smith said.

“It might not make sense to rush it and the better road may be to take the time and have a solid base, maybe race a couple of times towards the end of the year and not expect too much from it.

“That’s the discussion I have to have with my coaches but for now I just want to get back to swim, bike and run. When I get there then we can see how far away we are from elite level.

“My goal is to still get to the top of the sport. That, now, is probably not going to happen this year but my sport moves in four-year cycles so the goal is LA 2028. Where I need to be in 2025 is not super important but 2026, 2027 and obviously 2028 is.

“It’s now about setting myself up for those Olympics and the big-picture mindset is basically helping me a lot to get through this as two months out of 48 is not a lot of time to take off.”