Superman Tim Robards broken inside: SAS Australia champ on why looks can be deceiving

It was all about ignoring the pain as SAS Australia season four came to a spectacular end, with just two celebrities passing selection. Here is what you need to know.

From the outside, Tim Robards looks like Superman. Inside though, he fears his body is falling apart.

That’s the admission super-fit former Bachelorette star Robards has made after passing selection in the brutal SAS Australia reality TV show.

Robards and Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham are the only two of 14 to have passed selection in Wednesday’s series finale.

“In what I do as a chiropractor and with the different brands I work with, there is a responsibility I feel in some ways to be invincible like Superman,” Robards told The Daily Telegraph.

“Underlying I’ve actually had some pretty horrific injuries and some chronic stuff.

Tim Robards at Parsley Bay in Sydney ahead of SAS Australia season finale. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“My back is screwed, and just before going on the show, I went through three months of double strength antibiotic treatment for a suspected spinal infection.”

Robards, 41, is father to nearly three-year-old daughter, Elle.

Matthew Mitcham and Tim Robards on SAS Australia.

His partner Anna Heinrich, who competed on the 2022 season, is pregnant with the couple’s second child, also a girl.

He feared he wouldn’t make it past the first stage of the reality show.

“I struggle to bend down and pick up Elle’s stuff off the ground. I struggle to bend down and give her a hug. It is hard work,” said Robards, who suffers arthritis in his back.

“It is just doing everything with such pain. I’ve turned a blind eye to it, I block it out as much as I can but it sucks the life out of you.

Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards with their daughter, Elle. Picture: Seed Heritage

“When I wake up in the morning, to get out of bed, you start your day with this pain … it draws your mojo, your fun, it is a real challenge to be a positive energy for my wife and for my kid at times. The best thing for me is movement rather than not moving.”

Robards said he worries about the future with his kids.

“It does scare me a little bit as to how much I will be able to do with them from a physical point of view,” he said. “At the same time, maybe technology will come up with something that will help.”

Tim Robards and Matthew Mitcham with SAS Australia instructors.

As for SAS Australia, Robards made headlines when he beat Anthony Mundine in a fight scene on a bridge suspended above a ravine.

Mundine then quit the course and later challenged Robards to rematch.

“In the heat of the moment, he reacted a little bit, but I get it, when you are in that world and they are pushing you, sometimes you say things you wouldn’t necessarily normally say,” Robards said, adding that he would possibly have a go against Mundine in a ring for the right cash:

“You don’t know, if it was to raise a lot of money for charity, maybe, but I don’t think I’d fare too well,” he said.