ICE ONE, EMILY
Skater, 15, defies doctors by bouncing back from broken neck to qualify for British Championships
A YOUNG figure skater who came within a millimetre of death when she broke her neck in a car crash has qualified for the British Championships.
Emily Dale’s neck was so badly smashed in the accident that she had to wear a metal halo screwed into her skull for three months and a hard collar for eight months.
The 15-year-old was ordered to stay off the ice for a year. But on her first competition back after the crash, she earned enough points to win a place at the British Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield in November.
Emily said: “It was really exciting. I wasn’t even aiming for it in particular, I was just getting back into it. It was amazing when I qualified.”
The teenager was on her way to a training camp with her parents Gill and Stuart when the crash happened on the A9 near Pitlochry in October 2016.
Gill, 56, suffered a broken arm and a brain trauma and Stuart, 65, broke several ribs, his sternum, a thigh bone and a thumb.
Emily’s neck injuries were potentially catastrophic.
Gill, from Kingston, Moray, said: “It was a really serious fracture to the C2 and C3 vertebrae and there were several fractures within the fracture.
“Seeing the extent of the injuries on the screen was heartbreaking.”
Stuart added: “It could have been a lot worse because another millimetre or two and it would have been a complete break and that can be fatal. I only saw it on the X-rays and it was hanging by a thread. But Emily just got on with it.”
Emily’s injuries were so severe that she faced a long road to recovery, involving physiotherapy.
Her coaches had to take her back to basics and even now, she still gets pains in her neck, as the soft tissue around the break has yet to heal properly.
Gill added: “There were 26 specialists assigned to her case and they made the decision whether or not she should skate again. “Some said she shouldn’t, some said she would be fine. But we were lucky it was her surgeon in Aberdeen who had the casting vote. But she had to stay away from skating for 12 months and that was hard for her.” When Emily qualified for the British Championships, she got a standing ovation from fellow skaters around the rink who were amazed by her comeback. Stuart, 65, said it was “like a script from a movie”.