I’VE COME SO FAR
Tragedy to triumph for Kinghorn
SAMMI KINGHORN reflected earlier this week on her ‘darkest days’, the days when ‘you think you are never going to get out of bed or amount to anything’.
Kinghorn is thinking back to life as a 14-year-old, when she was paralysed from the waist down after being hit by a forklift truck as her father cleared snow from the family farm.
She now embraces happier times, and after a gold medal in the T53 200m event earlier this week and a bronze in the T53 400m, Kinghorn could be set for a quadruple medal haul as she competes over 100m this afternoon and 800m tonight.
The 21-year-old Scot said: ‘My parents are probably my greatest supporters. I appreciate my story — I can remember the darkest days when you think you are never going to get out of bed and you are never going to amount to anything because you have never met anyone in a wheelchair and you don’t know what life is going to be like in a wheelchair.
‘After I won gold in the 200m I lay in bed that night and I was thinking: “I have come really far”. People out there who are going through horrible things like accidents, they can get up and do something because life doesn’t end with something like that.
‘Every time I’m on the track my dad smiles a little bit more and accepts it a bit more. It’s never nice to be part of something that’s so devastating to your daughter’s life, but I can say to him that it’s okay and I wouldn’t be in this position without him.’
Kinghorn may yet be back in London in 2019. Ed Warner, London 2017 co-chairman, wants to bring the World Para Athletics Championships back again in two years time, with athletes hailing the size of the crowds — 20,000 were expected in the London Stadium both evenings this weekend — and impressive infrastructure.
The International Paralympic Committee, however, will make it privately clear that the fundamentals of any bid must be submitted before the end of the summer. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Warner said: ‘I would completely love to do it again. The athletes deserve it and this is the platform they want. To go somewhere else and see the size of crowds they’ve had previously, it would be a shame. London could help the IPC here and I’d like to see that happen.’