In May 2025, Sumiko Tan was out on what should have been another ordinary morning training ride. Then, she was hit from behind by a drunk driver. The 41-year-old endurance athlete, mother of two and founder of Sstitute Swim School remembers little about the crash itself.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up with a fractured T12 vertebra and a torn shoulder ligament — injuries that would keep her out of action for at least three months.
For someone who had spent more than two decades swimming, cycling and running, suddenly being unable to do any of those things was difficult to accept.
“That was really, really tough for me because I felt like a useless person,” she recalled. “Every day, [I would] just lie on the bed and I couldn’t do anything.”
But just as Tan was recovering from the accident, life dealt her another blow.
In October 2025, she was diagnosed with stage zero breast cancer. Two months later, she underwent a mastectomy. Within the space of seven months, Tan had gone from regularly training and racing to dealing with two major health crises.
“I actually questioned myself, ‘Why me?’” she said.
From childhood athlete to lifelong triathlete
Sport had been part of Tan’s life long before the events of 2025.
She started as a competitive swimmer in primary school before switching to track and field, where she raced the 400m and 800m. In secondary school, she competed in both track and cross-country and eventually became captain.
Her relationship with running wasn’t always straightforward.
When she entered junior college, Tan initially wanted to leave running behind and joined volleyball instead. But she was eventually scouted by a teacher and found herself back in track and field.
It was during those years that another sport entered the picture.
While training at Clementi Stadium, her running coach bought her her first road bike and encouraged her to try triathlon. Her first race was the Bintan Triathlon when she was around 19 and her introduction to the sport wasn’t exactly seamless.
“I didn’t know how to clip [and] unclip from my pedals,” she laughed, recalling how she fell onto volunteers at an aid station while attempting to grab a drink.
What began somewhat chaotically eventually became a serious pursuit.
Tan approached the Triathlon Association of Singapore and went on to train with its developmental squad. At university, she captained NTU’s biathlon team while continuing to swim, bike and run.
Over the next two decades, endurance sport became a constant in her life.
She raced triathlons and marathons from her late teens into her 40s, became increasingly competitive in running from around the age of 24, and competed at two IRONMAN 70.3 World Championships in Finland and New Zealand.
And she did all of it while building a career, becoming a mother of two and eventually starting her own swim school.
“I raced triathlon through work, managing my career, through my two kids, being a mother of two and then setting up my own school,” she said.
“It’s been a long journey and it’s been very fulfilling.”
The morning everything changed
On 29 May 2025, that journey was abruptly interrupted. Tan was cycling when a car struck her from behind. She lost consciousness and could not remember what happened until she woke up after the crash.
“I think that was really quite frightening for me,” she said.
The accident left her with a fractured T12 vertebra and a shoulder injury that required surgery, followed by months of rehabilitation.
Even now, more than a year later, Tan continues to attend physiotherapy weekly.
For an endurance athlete accustomed to being able to push her body through discomfort, the forced inactivity presented a very different challenge. There was no training plan she could simply grind her way through. Recovery required patience.
And then came another setback she never expected.
“Nobody would have expected it”
In October 2025, while still recovering from the accident, Tan was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Nobody would have expected maybe a person like me who is an athlete, you know, [with] a clean bill of health to have breast cancer,” she said.
Before receiving confirmation of the diagnosis, Tan underwent two surgeries. In December, she had a mastectomy and chose not to undergo breast reconstruction.
There was, however, some reassuring news: the cancer had been detected at stage zero.
“I’m just fortunate to know that it’s just stage zero and I could recover from that,” she said.
The diagnosis also challenged an assumption that can sometimes surround people who appear exceptionally fit and healthy.
Being an athlete did not make Tan immune to illness. Her fitness could not prevent an unexpected driver from hitting her, nor could it guarantee that cancer would never enter her life.
Within months, the body that had carried her through more than two decades of endurance sport had been through a serious accident, surgery, cancer and a mastectomy.
Back to racing
For Tan, recovery didn’t mean simply being able to exercise again. She wanted to race.
Her first triathlon back was MetaSprint, where she finished fifth despite still experiencing pain and not being fully recovered.
Then came the T100 Long Duathlon. She won her age group.
Her return to sport continued from there: HYROX doubles and relay, the Tour de Brisbane, and eventually qualification for the UCI World Cycling Championships in Niseko.
It was a remarkable return for someone who, months earlier, had been lying in bed unable to do the things that had defined much of her life.
The only way was up
There were moments when Tan wondered why so much had happened to her in such a short period of time.
But eventually, she found another way of looking at it. “I believe that anything that goes to rock bottom, the only way is just to go up,” she said.
Her recovery has been supported by friends and family, and little by little, sport has returned to her life. So has racing.
But even now, the recovery isn’t entirely over. Tan continues to undergo physiotherapy.
Thankfully, after everything her body went through in 2025, she is once again doing something that has been part of her life since she was a teenager: standing on start lines.
Her perspective, however, has changed.
“You never know what’s coming,” she said. “The unexpected might bring along some negativity. We are who we are and we can pull through this on our own, as well as with our friends and family members.”
Returning to racing isn’t simply about getting back to where she was before the accident or cancer.
Her body has changed. Her journey has changed. But after being forced to stop twice, she is moving forward again.
And sometimes, getting back to the start line is already a victory.
