Five years ago, Kai Sakakibara’s life nearly came to an end doing what he loved – bike racing. At a BMX world cup event in Bathurst, the Olympic hopeful was heading downhill into a turn when his front wheel seemed to buckle. The momentum saw Sakakibara slam headfirst into the dirt, causing carnage as a rider behind him tried to avoid the inevitable collision. In a split second, Sakakibara suffered a devastating brain injury.
It was unclear whether Sakakibara, who was 23 at the time, would survive. He eventually emerged from a coma, and it was uncertain if the cyclist would walk again. But last week Sakakibara was finally back doing what he loves.
At the Anna Meares Velodrome in Brisbane, the Queenslander was crowned Australia’s national champion in the Para C1 1000m time trial. And, Sakakibara tells Guardian Australia, this is just the beginning. “I feel great,” he says in an interview over Zoom. “But I still have a long way to go before I get to where I need to go. I’m looking forward to what’s to come.”
It has been a busy time for Sakakibara, now 28. After initially taking up rowing following the injury, the former BMX star only returned to cycling earlier this year. He was classified – the process to determine which para-sport category an athlete competes in – just days before the AusCycling national championships. Suddenly, he was flying around the velodrome, winning the national stripes.
“I hadn’t raced anyone for five years,” Sakakibara says. “I know that’s not that long, but it felt like ages to me. The fact I was able to do it, in front of all those fans, and come away with the win – it was absolutely amazing.”
Sakakibara has no memory of the crash that changed his life. A super slow-motion video on YouTube relays it over 19 agonising seconds (the clip has been watched nearly 150,000 times). To this day, he is still navigating the impact of the traumatic brain injury that left him in intensive care for months.
“To be honest, I wish I could tell you [about the aftermath of the crash],” he says. The incident occurred in February 2020; Sakakibara has no memory of the period from November 2019 until midway through his recovery. “I couldn’t walk or talk. That was really hard.”
Sakakibara’s father, Martin Ward, is by his son’s side for the interview; the brain injury’s ongoing impact means Sakakibara sometimes needs a moment to formulate an answer, or land on the right word. Ward encourages him when he gets stuck. “There’s no lead in to this stuff,” Ward says of Sakakibara’s time in hospital. “Everyone else in the brain injury ward – the nurses, the doctors – they’ve been there for many years. We’re thrown in the deep end.
“And the challenge with a brain injury is it’s not like breaking an arm – you know you’ll be in plaster for eight weeks and then it will be fixed. There’s no prognosis, it’s so complex. Despite what people know, they don’t know very much. So when we would say: ‘What’s going to happen?’ They would say: ‘Don’t know, wait and see’. ‘What’s the prognosis?’ ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Will he be a vegetable?’ ‘Don’t know.’ Kai likes to say one day at a time – that’s what it was for us. Every day was: ‘what can we do to make things better, let’s hope for tomorrow.’”
In time Sakakibara was transferred to Liverpool Hospital, in Sydney’s south-west. That is his first memory after the crash. “But I still thought it was just a dream,” he says. “I thought I would just wake up one day and go, ‘OK, time to go and train’. Obviously that wasn’t the case. That was really hard – at the time I don’t know how was I able to deal with it.’
In the first month after Sakakibara emerged from his coma, he was wheelchair-bound and unable to stand up. It came with a great unknown: would he ever be able to return to his passion of sporting competition? (Sakakibara had been in the process of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics).
“It was a big part of our life – BMX was all I ever thought about, really,” he says. “I didn’t know what else I was going to do. Luckily I found rowing, and track cycling – that was a saviour, I guess. If it wasn’t for those sports, I don’t know what I would be doing right now.”
Sakakibara’s return to sport helped him find community – others who had endured similar life-changing injuries – and new pursuits. In 2022, he attended a para-sport try-out day and soon found himself in a boat, learning to row. “That was awesome, a brand new sport – I thought, ‘what can I do here?’ That really drove me.” Sakakibara spent two years committed to para-rowing; he also became an ambassador for Connectivity, an advocacy group for sufferers of concussion and traumatic brain injury.
Sakakibara – who is half-Japanese, half-British and grew up in Australia – had made an aborted attempt to return to cycling early on in his recovery. “It was scary,” he says. “I didn’t want to crash and hurt my head again.” But a few months ago, he went back to the velodrome with his sister, the Olympic gold medallist Saya, , to watch her train. Sakakibara found that he had overcome his fear of the bike. “Those things that had troubled me, they weren’t there anymore.”
Sakakibara may have only been back on the bike for a few months, but it looks like a career-shift to track para-cycling will endure. “Rowing was a great transition,” he says. “But I think going with cycling, like I always have, is the way to go from here.” His eye is already on a Paralympic medal in three years’ time. “The Paralympics in Los Angeles would be an absolute dream come true for me.”
Sakakibara is based on the Gold Coast, meaning a home Paralympics might then await in 2032. But he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. “I’ve only just started, so I don’t want to make any promises. Those are the goals.”
Saya won BMX gold at the Paris Olympics; in a poignant moment, Kai and Saya embraced after the medal ceremony. Initially Kai struggled to understand the commotion; it was only when he and his sister came together that Sakakibara appreciated the significance of the moment.
“It was odd,” he says. “She finished and everyone was cheering, but I couldn’t really comprehend what had just happened. I was allowed on the track where they had the presentations, and Saya came over to hug me, saying ‘We did it.’ That’s when it sunk in; I thought, ‘We did do it.’ That was very special.”
It has been a long five years for the Sakakibara family. But at last, Kai Sakakibara is back on the bike. “It’s huge,” says his father. “It’s huge seeing him doing something he loves again.”
