“I think most of the time I’m still just the same,” Claire Danson says as we sit beneath a cold and darkening sky in the secluded gardens attached to the spinal unit at Salisbury hospital. The European triathlon champion, who won her 30-34 age category in June and then finished fifth overall when racing against men at the London triathlon in July, smiles in her wheelchair. Claire has been paralysed from the waist down since her bike was hit by a tractor while she was training on 28 August.
She will never walk again and yet, as the remarkable 30-year-old explains, this is not her most difficult challenge. She is being tested in all kinds of ways – from basic bodily functions to psychological adversity. Claire looks up with clear eyes as complex emotions flicker across her face.
Written by Donald McRae
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/16/claire-alex-danson-interview under the title “Claire and Alex Danson: ‘Doctors said she only survived because she was so fit’ | Donald McRae”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
