Just 16 months after a near-fatal accident, Dr. Michelle Haslinger competed in the Ironman World Championship in October. She finished the grueling race in 12 hours and 18 minutes, slightly faster than her time three years earlier. The time made her feel “kind of bummed” — her goal was to break 12 hours.
In June 2025, it was unclear whether she would ever compete again. Haslinger, a 44-year-old surgeon who directs Cambridge Health Alliance’s Breast Center, was training for an Ironman qualifying competition when she was struck by a car while cycling near Portland, Maine.
The collision left her with eight broken ribs, collapsed lungs on both sides, a fractured spine, a dislocated shoulder and a concussion.She spent eight days in the hospital, where doctors inserted a chest tube and surgically stabilized her broken ribs, followed by months of physical therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and red light therapy. Her doctors were uncertain whether she would ever fully recover.
“After all the surgeries and after I got discharged, that’s when the real healing began,” Haslinger said. “I was just so mentally sad, as well. Because I knew I wasn’t going to be racing, and I knew it was going to be a long time until I could physically achieve what I had just been doing.”
The long road to Kailua-Kona
A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Haslinger grew up playing basketball, coached by her father, and soccer, which she continued at Elmira College. There, she majored in biology and, at the suggestion of her mother, an OB-GYN nurse practitioner, decided to pursue medicine to combine her love of science, working with her hands and helping others. After graduating from medical school at the University at Buffalo, Haslinger entered a general surgery residency, also in Buffalo. Then, a soccer injury changed her career trajectory. She tore the ACL in her right knee and was forced to pause her surgical training. During her recovery, she conducted cancer research at Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute, developing a fascination with treating the disease..
She still loved reconstructive surgery, the satisfaction of putting a patient’s body back together. Torn between treating disease and repairing the damage left behind, Haslinger pursued a year of plastic surgery trainingat the University of Colorado in Denver before switching to breast surgery training at Georgetown University, where she could combine both interests. “It’s really important to leave (patients) feeling whole, like they’re still attractive,” Haslinger said. “They can look in the mirror and feel proud, and they can put this diagnosis behind them and move on.”
During her general surgery residency in Buffalo, Haslinger received a flyer from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society inviting runners to raise money for leukemia patientsby competing in the 2010 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. She signed up and was assigned a patient to run for. By coincidence, it was the husband of one of her mother’s patients, who was battling leukemia. The man was deeply touched by Haslinger’s participation, and the experience proved just as meaningful for her. “Once I got into running marathons, I was hooked,” Haslinger said.
In 2018, while working as a surgeon in Seattle, Haslinger decided to try triathlons, even though she didn’t know how to swim. She learned, bought a bicycle and joined a triathlon team, where she met and fell in love with her partner, one of the team’s coaches. After her first short-distance triathlon, she wondered whether she could go any farther. “I finished the race, and I thought, ‘Who in their right mind would ever do more than this?’” she said. “And then next thing you know, I’m signing up for double the distance, and then … a full Ironman.”
Learning to heal
For Haslinger, recovering from the crash meant more than allowing her broken bones to mend. Even as her physical injuries healed, getting back on a bicycle remained frightening.
“The first time was emotional. I think I cried. I was scared,” Haslinger recalled. “I did it with my triathlon team, so I wasn’t alone. and I just took it easy, but I think I was shaky. My heart was pounding.”
Slowly, the milestones began to accumulate. In February 2026, eight months after the crash, Haslinger returned to the operating room. In April, she ran the Boston Marathon. Then, in July, she finished fourth in her age group at an Ironman competition in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, earning a place at October’s World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
“Having a race on the calendar and knowing I was going to race Boston 2026, gave me that push to keep working hard and get to that goal,” Haslinger said.
The experience has changed how Haslinger relates to her patients. For nearly two months after the accident, she relied on her mother and partner for help with everyday tasks, from showering to getting dressed, giving her a first hand understanding of the painful limitations her patients face after surgery.
“I can tell them from experience, like, ‘it’s gonna be okay, because if I can do it, you can do it,’” she said. “And they suddenly feel this. They have a smile and they feel relieved.”
Haslinger said sharing her experience has brought some patients to tears and created a deeper bond between doctor and patient. “We have this sort of now newfound relationship where we have this common ground and they feel they have this deep sense of trust in me,” she said.
This story was updated to add a photo of Haslinger competing.
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