Listowel cyclist nearly killed last year ready to test mettle at Ironman

A Listowel cyclist’s route to an Ironman triathlon started 17 months ago after a hit-and-run crash crushed his spine, but not his spirit.

“I should’ve been dead,” Mike Bitton said in a telephone interview Tuesday, less than a month before an Ironman race he plans to enter in Panama City, Fla.

A PhD student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La., Bitton, 34, was a member of the school’s cycling team in May 2010.

On a sunny Saturday morning he headed out of town for a training run on a winding rural road.

“It’s arguably the safest place to ride in Baton Rouge,” he said from his Louisiana home.

Bitton doesn’t remember the moment a pickup truck crashed into him from behind and inflicted a long list of severe injuries, including four shattered vertebrae, a collapsed left lung, nearly a dozen broken ribs, multiple bruises and right butt cheek nearly torn off.

Hospital staff pumped 18 units of blood into him.

“I was bleeding it out as fast as they were giving it to me for awhile,” he said.

The following day, police investigating the crash charged a Louisiana man with several offences. He pleaded guilty earlier this year and awaits sentencing.

Bitton spent several weeks in a Baton Rouge hospital before being transferred to a Listowel hospital where he stayed for about a month, then was discharged to his sister’s Listowel home.

He took one step at a time while hanging onto a walker for support. By early August he hit a milestone, strolling for 10 minutes without his walker.

“That was the day I decided to do an Ironman (triathlon),” Bitton said, his voice cracking with emotion. “If I was able to build myself to being able to walk for 10 minutes, then I can build myself to do an Ironman.”

At that moment, Bitton set his sights on reclaiming part of his past. Several years ago he completed an Ironman triathlon in under 11 and a half hours.

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