Katie Bone was a rookie sensation in American Ninja Warrior season 14, but for the last few years, she’s been out of the competition. While competing at the Olympic Trials for Climbing in February 2023, she injured her knee and has needed multiple surgeries on it. However, with rehabilitation, grit, and determination, she has made it through the qualifiers of American Ninja Warrior season 17.
It wasn’t an easy push. As someone who suffered a knee injury that required surgery when I was 17, I can empathize with the struggle that comes with this. Katie is living with Type 1 diabetes as well, and that adds another layer to her training and competitive nature.
We chatted about her injury, her diabetes, and more in this exclusive interview.
Katie Bone shares her message for others in American Ninja Warrior season 17
GeekSided: Congratulations on the buzzer. How did that feel?
Katie Bone: It was incredible. I’ve not been able to compete for a few years, so getting to come back and hit a buzzer on my first chance back on the course felt really, really incredible; Very rewarding after everything I had to go through to get back there.
GS: It was certainly a journey for you.
KB: A very long journey. It was incredible hard in a lot of ways. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever go back, so it felt good to get the call and to build and train and actually get to walk on the stage again.
GS: I can empathize. I wrecked my knee playing soccer and had to go through surgery. It’s not easy to train again. What was the point you knew you had to go back?
KB: I think when I hurt my knee I knew I wanted to go back. I hurt my knee two weeks before seasons 15 and 16, so I felt very ready and excited to compete again. I knew I wanted to go back up there and share the story and not make it look like I gave up because something big happened. I needed it for me, because it felt like my knee kind of determined the end for me, and I was no okay with that. I kind of personally needed to choose when I was done with Ninja, and once the applications opened again, I wanted to do it for myself.
GS: What’s the message that you want to deliver to all those out there going through something similar? There are going to be a lot of people looking up to you.
KB: That even when it’s really hard, not to give up. I know that sounds very cliché, and you hear it a lot, but when you are at your lowest of your lows, all you want is to give up and walk away, because I did. I was very close to walking away from both of my sports, so it has been worth it not to do that and to just keep persevering and not giving up when things are really hard.
GS: And it’s so great you didn’t do it alone. Your friends were there supporting you. Is that something else that helped to push you and get back into both your sports?
KB: For sure. I cannot have done it without all my friends and my boyfriend. I just had knee surgery about a week ago again, so I could not have done the last few weeks without them. You feel very alone, even when people are there. You sometimes feel very alone because not a lot of people fully understand what you’re going through, and they don’t understand what you’re going through in that moment, and that can be very frustrating. When you realize that all they’re trying to do is make your life easier and help you, it’s kind of life-changing.
And seeing who really cares about you, too. People seem to care about you when you’re in your highest of highs, but it’s very cool to see who really will stick by you when you’re truly at rock bottom.
GS: What was it like being back out in the arena and facing each of the obstacles?
KB: It was amazing. I felt a lot of support and a lot of people are very proud of me for being there again and just getting to be on that stage again in front of the lights. It is an incredible feeling. And getting to do what I love to do, which yes is Ninja, but it’s also competing.
GS: You looked a little tentative at times on how you were going to land and manage each obstacle. What was going through your mind?
KB: I have not trusted my knee since I got injured. I have trusted it a lot more as time went on, but I still don’t fully trust it. I was competing and my knee was still torn, and I had another surgery right after, so there was a part of me that was very nervous with my falls.
I obviously don’t want to make it worse, and I hadn’t done landings like that in a while. I was mainly speed climbing. There’s a lot of fear and trauma that I hadn’t quite worked through. I got injured competing and falling, so there’s always that on the back of my mind.
GS: How do you keep yourself in the zone as you’re going through each of those obstacles?
KB: Competing is very different than training. I was having a lot of panic attacks, and I was very hesitant, barely doing hard obstacles because I wasn’t mentally good at it. When I am competing with adrenaline and I just walk into the space, because it had been so long, I can just do the obstacle and not be afraid. There’s still a point where if it’s a landing where it’s scary, I’m like, ‘Oh no, what about my knee?’ Then you just have to trst it.
At that point, my knee was strong, and I was going to work, and I had to trust that my knee wasn’t bulletproof, but it was good enough to take the falls.
GS: My niece is also Type 1 diabetic, and I have seen her highs and lows and dealt with a lot just from her running around. It’s amazing how much blood sugar and energy and hormones are all connected. How do you manage it while you’re training?
KB: Oh wow! It’s mentally very hard for sure. It’s a lot of decisions that I’m making every single day, that you’ve seen firsthand. For me, the day I was diagnosed, I was like, ‘Yes, I can still compete, and I can still live the life that I want to. It’s just a lot harder.’
I have to deal with more things, but I kind of just figured that routine and figured out the things that worked for my body and what to do when I’m starting to go low or starting to go high, so that I don’t have to deal with the extremes of both of those when competing. I’d rather compete low rather than high, because if I’m high, I’ll be very aggressive with that.
GS: Yes! I’ve seen what running high can look like when running around.
KB: When my blood sugar is high, I get pumped really easily, like pumped in my forearms. There’s that side of things where I just compete so much worse. When I’m low, I can’t really think, but I’d rather deal with that, rather than the physical side of things being high.
GS: Did managing one medical diagnosis help managing your knee when it came back to figuring out your routine?
KB: Sure. I dealt with a lot of the mental stuff that kind of arose with when my knee happened. It was just another thing, like ‘Yes, I can do this, but now my training has to look a lot different.’ I had to change up my mental stuff when I first got injured. I could barely climb, because I was genuinely terrified. I didn’t know if I wanted to climb again, which is a big reason why I wanted to walk away.
It was one of those things where I asked myself if it was worth it. What was I getting out of this if I continued. Do I love doing it as much as I do? It’s easy to love doing something when you’re at the top, but it’s a lot harder when you’re at the bottom and you start over. You have to figure out how to get there again, because it went from being about to be on a national team and getting the biggest comps of my life that year, to barely being able to walk.
GS: Are you pushing for the Olympics again?
KB: Yeah, I would love to go to the Olympics. It’s why I just had knee surgery now, because it’s a 15-month recovery. I basically partially tore my ACL again, and I’ve had two surgeries, so I just had this one and I have another one. I’m out for a long time, so I won’t be competing for a while.
The goal is to get back on the national team right before Olympic qualifiers. If I don’t do that, then basically it’s eight more years until the next one. I’ve wanted to do the Olympics since I was three years old, and I don’t think I could ever be okay with at least not trying to do that.
GS: You say eight years if you don’t get this one, but it’s not that far away in the grand scheme of things.
KB: Especially when you’re doing something that you love. It feels worth it to me to put in the time to do that.
American Ninja Warrior airs on Mondays at 8/7c on NBC.