Former All Black Sonny Bill Williams has revealed he had open heart surgery after doctors found a heart defect he had carried since birth, a problem that only came to light during a routine check after one of his neck operations.
The 41-year-old, who won two Rugby World Cups with New Zealand and two premierships in rugby league, told the story in a 24-minute video titled “My Heart Stopped” on his YouTube channel. News of the surgery was reported overseas on Friday and picked up by 1News from the Associated Press on Saturday morning. He says the operation was a success.
Williams said the defect was found almost by accident. He had gone back for a follow-up after surgery on his neck earlier this year, and the tests picked up a problem with his heart that nobody had spotted in more than two decades of professional sport.
“So, if I didn’t go in and get it checked, they wouldn’t know,” he said in the video, as quoted by Ruck.
The operation was carried out in Melbourne by surgeon Dr Michael O’Keefe, who performed what is known as a Ross procedure. It is a complex operation in which a damaged aortic valve, the main valve that lets blood out of the heart into the body, is replaced with the patient’s own pulmonary valve, and a donated human valve is then fitted in the pulmonary position. The procedure is most often used for younger adults with aortic valve disease, partly because it can spare them a lifetime on blood-thinning medication.
O’Keefe told Williams his body had been working around the problem for years without him knowing. “You’ve been playing with a handicap which you haven’t realised for a long time,” the surgeon said, according to the Sunday Guardian.
Looking back, Williams said he had noticed something was different well before the diagnosis. “Upon reflecting, I feel like toward my late 20s, I definitely felt like I couldn’t get as fit as I used to,” he said, 1News reported. He said doctors told him the defect would have affected his sporting career.
His late twenties were the busiest and most decorated years of a career few New Zealand athletes have matched. He moved between rugby league and rugby union, played sevens at the Rio Olympics in 2016, and was part of the All Blacks sides that won the World Cup in 2011 and again in 2015. Through much of that time he was also boxing. He retired from both rugby codes in 2021 and has fought professionally since, most recently in a heavyweight bout in 2025.
The doctors who treated him were blunt about how lucky he had been. “The doctors both said,” Williams said, “it is a miracle that you found it (the defect) because it’s a case of a perfectly fit-looking person dropping dead.”
The recovery was far harder than anything he faced on the field, he said. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Day two, honestly, I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” he said in the video, Ruck reported.
His wife Alana also appears in the video and talks about the strain the operation put on the family, the Sunday Guardian reported.
The outlook now is good. Speaking from hospital after the surgery, Williams said he had a “better heart than when I walked in here”, 1News reported. He kept his sense of humour too. “I told you I always had a big heart,” he said, SA Rugby Magazine reported.
It caps a difficult year for his health. In June he was rushed to a hospital emergency department when the wound from his fourth neck operation became infected. He said at the time the infection was close to his spinal cord, calling that “the worrying bit”, 1News reported on 22 June. It was the follow-up from that neck surgery that led doctors to his heart.
Williams said he made the video because he wants people to know a heart problem can sit quietly in someone who looks perfectly fit, and that a check-up found his when nothing else had. His message is that feeling well is not the same as having been checked.
For New Zealand sport fans, the news lands in a week already full of rugby, with the All Blacks preparing for their northern tour and the Black Ferns playing France at home. Few players from either code have been as widely followed as Williams.
The big question for many will be whether Williams steps back into a boxing ring. He has not said, and the video focuses on his recovery and his family rather than any return to fighting. For now, the man who spent two decades as one of the fittest athletes in the world says he is grateful to have a heart that works better than it ever did.
Have you or someone in your family had a heart problem picked up by a routine check? Share your story in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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