Bill Chaffey lives on the Gold Coast of Australia with his wife, Vanessa, and their two daughters, Heidi and Amity. He began racing as a 25-year-old age-group triathlete in 2001, competing across every distance. In December 2004, in Canberra, he qualified for the 2005 Australian Ironman Championship, to be held in Forster that April. While training for the race on March 29th, he was cycling in a designated bike lane beside the Pacific Highway in northern New South Wales when a truck struck him from behind. The crash broke four vertebrae with spinal cord damage at L1, shattered his pelvis in an open-book fracture, compound-fractured both elbows, and caused serious internal injuries. Surgeons inserted rods to reconnect his spine to his pelvis, used external fixation to rebuild it, and placed eight screws in each elbow. He lost consciousness for a week and spent the next five months in the hospital.
After he was discharged, he wanted to stay fit, so he started swimming. Eventually he decided to return to triathlon as a wheelchair athlete, and in 2008 he became the first wheelchair competitor to race the Gold Coast Half Ironman. The following year, he won his first ITU World Championship on the Gold Coast, held over the Olympic distance. He went on to race the ITU World Championships every year — now held at sprint distance — finishing 2nd in Budapest in 2010, then winning three consecutive world titles in Beijing, Auckland, and London.
Bill had always wanted to complete a full Ironman. He raced his first long-distance triathlon in 2005, then won the wheelchair division at Ironman Cairns in 2012. In 2013, Geoff Meyer, CEO of Ironman Asia-Pacific, made Ironman Cairns a qualifying event for wheelchair athletes at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. Bill returned to Cairns that year, won again, and earned his spot at Kona — where he finished 2nd in the Ironman World Championship in a time of 9:30.
After winning the ITU World Championship in Beijing in 2011, Bill was accepted into the Australian Institute of Sport triathlon program as its first para-triathlete, and later into the Queensland Academy of Sport. He now trains under QAS head coach Stephen Moss, working toward the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, where triathlon will make its Paralympic debut. He doesn't consider himself a solo athlete: two friends, Darren and Luke, have been with him throughout this journey, traveling the world to help in every race — carrying him from the water to the bike, helping him in and out of his equipment, and managing the logistics that make his racing possible. They're an integral part of his team, and Bill couldn't race without them.
Bill loves to compete, and he never races to come second — whether it's a casual outing with friends or a World Championship, he goes out to win. Every minute of his training is aimed at making him faster on race day. "After a hard week of training, relaxation time spent with my wife Vanessa and my kids is still the best part of my week," he says.