Evans’s big heart finishes Dakar
Looking for a South African who has overcome the hurdles life has thrown his way? Look no further than Joey Evans.
Following a motor bike accident 10 years ago he was left a paraplegic. A week ago he completed the Dakar Rally.
And on the penultimate day of the rally, disaster threatened to strike again when Evans leapt to safety as a competitor in a car crushed his motorbike.
Showing the same determination that got him to South America, Evans refused to abandon the rally. Hauling his bike through the bush, he came across a bike left by a rider who had been airlifted out.
From the two damaged bikes, Evans managed to rejoin the rally and finish, making it from Asunción, Paraguay, to Buenos Aires in Argentina in decent time – something he has dreamed of for many years.
But that is not the truly heroic part of his story, says physiotherapist Sharné Bailey, who worked with Evans after the accident which broke his T8 and T9 vertebrae, crushing his spinal cord and leaving him paralysed from just below the chest.
Sheer persistence saw him working daily on the difficult job of rehabilitation with physiotherapists Bailey and Melanie Harding. A neurosurgeon fused the two vertebrae to give him a 10% chance of walking again.
Harding worked with Evans and the 10% chance soon grew to the stage when he started dreaming of the Dakar Rally.
“About five years ago, we started talking about doing the Dakar,” said Bailey. “Biking was his life: he had that fire in him.”
Hard work, clever physiotherapy and the persistence to overcome obstacles — including riding into a cow two years ago, and sustaining more damage — finally got Evans to the starting line of the Dakar Rally.
“He told me that any competitor only has a 30% chance of finishing the Dakar, so he reckoned he had maybe a 10% chance and that was enough for him,” Harding said.
Bailey said: “Evans is an inspiration; just to know that it is possible, if you are given a chance … and that’s what I try to do with all my patients, just give them a chance.”