"It was like falling off a building and suddenly, bang, you hit the bottom. The first time it happened was on an ordinary day at home. I was taking down some curtains. I took one step, turned around, took another step and then I fell and hit my head hard on the rowing machine"
About this Quote
It lands with the blunt physics of catastrophe: not a graceful “I got dizzy,” not a cinematic slow motion, but a body obeying gravity and nothing else. Lomu reaches for the most unromantic metaphor possible - falling off a building - to translate a sudden loss of control into something any listener can feel in their stomach. The “bang” is doing heavy work: it’s the sound of impact, but also the punctuation of disbelief. One moment you’re functional, the next you’re introduced to your own fragility.
The domestic details are the quiet knife twist. Curtains, a normal day, two steps. He’s not on a rugby pitch with cameras and adrenaline; he’s in the private off-stage where elite bodies are supposed to behave. That’s the subtext: illness doesn’t negotiate with reputation. For a man whose public identity was built on power, speed, and inevitability, the setting strips him of the myth and leaves the human. The rowing machine - an emblem of training, discipline, athletic control - becomes the object that hurts him. It’s an almost cruel inversion: the tool of strength is now part of the accident.
The intent feels less like drama than translation. Lomu is giving language to a frightening neurological interruption (his later-documented health struggles shadow this moment), and he does it in plain speech, as athletes often do: concrete, sequential, testable. That straightforwardness makes the fear sharper. There’s no poetic buffer between the listener and the floor.
The domestic details are the quiet knife twist. Curtains, a normal day, two steps. He’s not on a rugby pitch with cameras and adrenaline; he’s in the private off-stage where elite bodies are supposed to behave. That’s the subtext: illness doesn’t negotiate with reputation. For a man whose public identity was built on power, speed, and inevitability, the setting strips him of the myth and leaves the human. The rowing machine - an emblem of training, discipline, athletic control - becomes the object that hurts him. It’s an almost cruel inversion: the tool of strength is now part of the accident.
The intent feels less like drama than translation. Lomu is giving language to a frightening neurological interruption (his later-documented health struggles shadow this moment), and he does it in plain speech, as athletes often do: concrete, sequential, testable. That straightforwardness makes the fear sharper. There’s no poetic buffer between the listener and the floor.
Quote Details
| Topic | Health |
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