In February 2004 while working on the security systems for the Athens Olympic Games I fell from a building breaking my lower back. I smashed my L1 vertebrae, cracked my C6 vertebrae, broke several ribs, suffered internal bleeding and took a hit to the head that left me with no memory of the events leading up to the fall or the fall itself. The first thing I remember is my family standing over me saying I had had an accident. I’m now a L3 paraplegic.

Once I had recovered and gone back to work the decision not to feel sorry for myself had already been made. Nothing was going to change my situation and with encouragement from family and friends I started to see what challenges I could take on.

Before my accident I had been a keen snowboarder, wake boarder & dabbled with surfing, most of my friends were surprised that I didn’t break my back doing that. I travelled with a friend to Canada for Christmas and her uncle took three days to teach me some basic sit skiing. I got the bug and we took a week in Sweden to ski again the following year, but it was only when I went to Winter Park with Back Up that I decided that I wanted to get better than just a casual punter.

So what next?

I decided to take 3 months off work and to skiing in Canada for the 2008-2009 season, I had a great time and met lots of fantastic people, but it was always a one time trip for me.

Once I got back to England after my three month work break, I request another one so I could go back and do it again. The company I worked for said it wasn’t possible and I wasn’t able to do it, at the time they didn’t know I had already made my mind up and I was going back no matter what they had said.

It was a difficult decision to make, but once I had weighed up all my options it became a lot simpler. I wasn’t happy at work and they certainly were not using me to my full potential and given the opportunity to work for a company with the only reward being financial or go explore the world and live life to the full while working on projects that interested me, it was a no-brainer, not doing it wasn’t an option anymore.

Skiing isn’t the only thing I want to do with my time, I want to do more charity work and help people that have had spinal injuries like myself, I want to work on interesting cutting edge projects when you are not held back by risk adverse attitudes, I want to be free to travel the world and sample what is out there, all these things are available to everyone.

No body said they wished they had spent more time in the office on their death bed.