If I had my time again I’d CHOOSe to be disabled
Sophie was a royal bridesmaid. Then, aged 22, a tragic accident left her paralysed. But, as she becomes Country Life’s first ‘Girl in Pearls’ in a wheelchair, she tells why, astonishingly, it’s made her life so much richer
FOR more than a century the Girls in Pearls photo has been a staple of Country Life, the magazine of the hunting, fishing and shooting set.
Royalty, debs and nice upper-middle- class gals have all posed for it. This month another nice middle- class girl joined the long line of GIPs. With her glossy hair, peaches and cream complexion and impeccable credentials, Sophie elwes looks born for the role.
Look again, however, and you’ll notice Sophie isn’t your regular ‘posh totty’. She’s in a wheelchair for one thing, and she’s also ‘popping a wheelie’ (her words).
The 30-year-old is the first girl in pearls and wheelchair. ‘I love the picture — although it’s slightly shocking that I’m the first woman in a wheelchair to feature,’ she says, adding, ‘About time!’
Had her life run its expected course Sophie would today have made headway in her chosen career in the events industry, whiling away her leisure time socialising with her formidably well-connected friends. (As a tot, she was bridesmaid to Lady Helen Windsor when she married Tim Taylor in 1992.)
As it was, she came within a whisker of losing her life, plunging eight metres from a rooftop balcony in 2011 — when she was just 22 — and crushing her spinal cord. Since,
she has been paraplegic; paralysed from the chest down. Such a catastrophic injury would have precipitated a spiral into despair for many.
But for Sophie, extraordinarily, it signalled a bright, new beginning. ‘Becoming disabled changed my personality,’ she says. ‘ Before, my priorities were going out to cool new restaurants, buying fashionable clothes. I was shallow.
‘I wasn’t a horrible person; it’s just that different things were important to me. Coming close to death gave me a new lease of life. Now I work for a charity supporting people in a similar position to me. I don’t care how cool anything is any more.
‘And I’m happier than I was, even though I’m in a wheelchair.’ Really? ‘Yes. I much prefer the person I am now,’ she confirms. ‘If I’d had a choice in the matter, I’d still have had the accident.’ You would opt to become disabled? ‘Without a doubt. It has given me incredible opportunities as well as gratitude and zest for life. I’ve learnt so much from it and I’m a better person.’
Sophie’s courage is matched by her determination to wring every drop of joy out of life. And the small matter of her disability, far from restricting her, has — against all logic — paved the way for challenges that would make a commando blanch.
She is in Florida on the day we speak; bright, articulate and fizzing with energy as she trains for the World Disabled Waterski Championships, in which she will represent Britain in July.
She was also a member of the British Parasnowsport Development Team — hurtling down slopes on her sit-ski at dizzying velocity — before she decided to concentrate on water sports.
In April, by way of diversion, she will compete to raise funds for Back Up (the charity she works for which helps spinal cord injury victims) in the London Marathon. This, she says, is the ultimate feat: because she has no core strength, she will propel herself the 26.2 miles just with the power of her arms.
‘It will be the biggest challenge I’ve ever undertaken,’ she says. ‘It’s for a great cause, but I won’t necessarily enjoy it. I did the Reading half- marathon last week. It reminded me of everything that’s cr*p about being in a wheelchair.’
However skiing — on snow or water — is different. It allows her to break free from the constraints imposed by her injury. ‘When I learnt to sit-ski it was transformative; a revelation.
‘It gave me freedom!’ she says. ‘It made me realise that even if you’re disabled you can still do dangerous things. Water skiing is the same. You’re not a girl in a wheelchair any more. You’re focusing on what you can do, not what you can’t.
‘It takes a huge toll on you physically. I’ve had a lot of injuries; some hefty crashes. I’ve hit my head. It’s not like taking a gentle ride around a lake.
‘I’m aiming to hit 49 kilometres per hour today. The world record for a disabled water- skier is 55kph.’ There is an insouciance about her refusal to be confined
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life before the accident was a gilded one. Raised in Wandsworth, South London, with her brothers Hugo, 27, and Jamie, 32, she is the only daughter of Martin elwes and his wife Sarah.
The family lineage is distinguished: her father, who died of cancer in 2014, was the son of an Army Major; her mother daughter of baronet and Tory MP the late Sir William Worsley.
Sophie went to private school — St Mary’s, Wantage — and seized every chance to be active, playing tennis and enjoying regular skiing holidays.
She had just graduated from Leeds University with a degree in sociology when her life changed irrevocably. She had gone to a party with Jamie and sister- in- law Annunciata in London, and was chatting on the roof terrace (which had no railing or balustrade) when she lost her balance and fell.
She has no recollection of the sharp descent onto concrete or the party in which she had enjoyed just a couple of drinks.
‘Last thing I remember is sitting on the bus debating whether to call at the offie. Five weeks later I woke up in hospital — I’d been in an induced coma — with a head injury, my back broken and breathing through a tracheotomy.
‘My parents were told I had a 40 per cent chance of surviving and, if I did, because I’d banged my head, I may suffer traumatic brain injury. That was their main concern. The paralysis was secondary in a way.
‘And I was so doped up with painkillers when I did wake up, the progress of my understanding was slow. I couldn’t speak, so I wrote on a pad to my mum: “Why can’t I move my legs?”
‘I don’t remember a moment of revelation when I thought: “I can’t walk.” The realisation came on me by degrees. But I remember asking a medic if I’d walk again and he said: “Very unlikely.” I was angry, but only momentarily.
‘ I didn’t waste time being bitter. I had hundreds of kind messages, which buoyed me up, no end of presents and hardly any pain. But I do remember being pragmatic. I’d been on the cusp of getting a job as a party planner and I thought, “I’ll have to do something different. Let’s see what I can do with this.” ’
I ask if she had any negative thoughts or regrets about the profound change in her life and she admits: ‘In the first weeks
after I came out of hospital I didn’t want to go out. I remember being scared when I went to the cinema with a friend on the bus and being crushed by the realisation that there would be stairs.
‘Even negotiating kerbs in my wheelchair was difficult. I felt the contrast to my old life acutely.
‘I’d been used to being a girl about town, living the fast life. Now my life was full of restraints. I’m grateful I don’t think negatively for long.’
In fact she began to forge new interests, taking up the extreme challenges that now consume her.
A year after her injury, a volunteer with Back Up — a fellow paraplegic and Paralympian — encouraged her to learn to sit-ski. Shortly after, sponsored by the charity, she was on a plane to Colorado, alone on her first trip to the USA, poised to learn how to master the sport without the use of her legs.
‘ Frankly, I was scared,’ she admits. ‘I was very young and I’d only just been signed off by the doctor. No one else who’d had a similar injury was learning to ski so soon. I felt intimidated. Then I arrived and went up into the mountains, and there were disabled athletes from all over the world doing extraordinary things.
‘It opened my eyes to what was possible. I didn’t think I wanted to hang out with a lot of people with spinal injuries, but here were super-cool people doing crazy stuff on skis and it was inspirational.’
SHE adds: ‘The second I left my wheelchair behind it was liberating; a moment of pure joy. When Mum met me at the airport ten days later I had a huge grin on my face. I was floating on air.’
her life, post-injury, has been a series of adventures. She’s leapt from a plane in a ski- dive, raced round Silverstone driving a souped-up Golf; whizzed down slopes on a snowmobile. She says her thrill-seeker gene is inherited from her father, a property finder and estate agent. ‘ Dad would appreciate everything I’m doing now. he’d give me the nod.
‘Sometimes I think of him watching me, approvingly, when I’m wakeboarding from a boat.’
Returning from the U.S. the question of how she would earn a living preoccupied her. She took a graduate certificate in education at University College London, planning to become a primary teacher.
She passed, but did not go into teaching, finding life a struggle; particularly as she was also dealing with the grief of her father’s untimely death.
Although she is brusquely unemotional — I suspect her stiff upper lip is also inherited — she concedes: ‘ After Dad died I was having a sh*t time. I wanted to do something different, to be independent and stretch my wings.’ Using her father’s legacy to fund her stay, she returned to Colorado to spend five months training to ski to an international level. ‘I lived in a flat on my own, and it took a lot of guts, tears and frustration. I had to keep picking myself up, literally and metaphorically.
‘There were athletes there with all kinds of disabilities: people with one leg doing jumps and skiing downhill at 70mph, others with almost no vision taking huge physical risks. There was a whole world out there and it was inspiring.’
Thereafter Sophie, the most impaired skier in her class, trained with the British Parasnowsport Development team and was ranked 26th and 28th in the world in alpine skiing giant slalom and slalom respectively. ‘But I felt there was more exciting stuff I wanted to focus on; other things I wanted to achieve.’ So instead, she took up waterskiing, training ferociously while working with the mentoring team for Back Up. ‘When the sun is shining there’s nowhere I’d rather be than waterskiing or wakeboarding on heron Lake near Staines [home to the British Disabled Waterski and Wakeboard Association].’
Sophie also writes a blog with friend and fellow paraplegic Beth Requist, whom she met in the U.S. while skiing. As well as advice and accounts of their escapades, it is intended to inform and inspire others with similar spinal injuries.
‘We’re two women who have broken our backs and we’re sharing our experiences with the world,’ she says. ‘I’ve been amazed and awed by what is possible, by the fact that I’m waterskiing, I’ve jumped out of planes and I’m competing in marathons.
‘We want others in our situation to know you don’t have to have a limited life because you’re in a wheelchair. We want to share our knowledge with the world and keep breaking boundaries.
‘We want people to know that disability is not the end, just a new
beginning.’
Read Sophie’s blog on: ouradaptiveworld.com, Instagram @ouradaptiveworld. To donate to her JustGiving page for the London Marathon in aid of Back Up, go to justgiving.com/sophieelwesmarathon.