I SEE MY ACCIDENT AS A GIFT
TracK-and-field athlete Stefanie reid MBE, 36, lives in loughborough, leicestershire, with her husband, canadian Paralympian Brent lakatos, 41. She is competing in the women’s long jump T64 final on august 28 at 2.41am. Beautiful, bright at school and talented on the sports field, 15-year-old Stefanie Reid planned to pursue a professional rugby career when a terrifying accident on a lake with friends in toronto, Canada, changed her life.
‘We had spent the afternoon tubing, clinging to a rubber ring tied to a motorboat,’ she says. ‘i’d been flung off and was waiting for the boat to come back around.
‘But when i turned back i realised the driver — my best friend’s brother — hadn’t seen me.
‘He was coming way too fast. i knew i wouldn’t have enough time to swim away from the massive propellers. i thought i could dive down and clear them but i had a lifejacket on, so i didn’t get down very far.’
When she surfaced, she thought she had been lucky — but back on the boat, she suddenly realised why her friends looked so horrified.
Stefanie had been hit by the propellers across her back and legs. ‘i could reach right inside my body. i thought i’d been cut in half,’ she says.
at hospital, the only way the surgeon could stop the bleeding was to amputate her foot. ‘i was devastated. Sport was my dream. it was what i lived for.’
But not one to be cowed by adversity, she switched her focus to academia and got a scholarship to study biochemistry at university in Canada.
it was there that she found athletics — going on to compete at the World Championships three years later, and in 2008 winning a bronze medal in the 200m for Canada at the Beijing Paralympics.
in 2010, she joined the ParalympicsGB team (her parents are both British, although she grew up in Canada) and won silver medals in the long jump at london and Rio. Now, she is set to succeed at tokyo 2020 — with her husband, fellow Paralympian and seventime medallist Brent lakatos, cheering her on all the way. No matter the result, she is thankful. ‘the accident changed who i was as a person. it changed my values and my goals in life,’ Stef says. ‘that has been an incredible gift and i am grateful.’