Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CHAIRDEVIL
Daring Lily is champ at heart-stopping stunts
LILY Rice is teetering on the edge of a 15ft vertical drop, the slightest movement and her wheelchair will go over.
It looks like a terrifying situation but the daring 16-year-old is exactly where she wants to be.
Time and again she will risk life and limb by launching herself down the ramp to perform amazing stunts.
It is a critical part of the spectacular sport of wheelchair motorcross (WCMX) and Lily is the women’s world champion.
WCMX athletes, like BMX riders and skateboarders, score points by doing stunts and tricks.
Lily is the first woman in Europe, and only the second in the world, to do a backflip in her chair.
The sport has changed her attitude to her chair from something that confined her to something that sets her free.
Lily, of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, was eight when she was diagnosed with the muscular disorder hereditary spastic paraplegia. It got worse over time and she had difficulty coming to terms with using a wheelchair. She said: “I tried to hide it in the corner of my room.
“I didn’t want anything to do with it. I thought the chair was a negative thing and it was me giving up. I didn’t want people to look at me like I was disabled.
“But then I thought, what’s the point in hiding it? I may as well get on with it and show people what I can do.”
After some research, and persuading her parents to support her in the sport, they got
Lily a custom-made chair. Within seven months of intensive training she landed a backflip. She said: “I’d spend hours on the same ramp just trying to get it right. I fell a lot, forwards, backwards, sideways. But eventually I landed it and it was the best feeling ever.”
But after a nasty fall in 2018, Lily’s confidence was badly hit. She leaned forward slightly too much and slammed face down on the floor, blood spilling from where she had bitten right through her lip. She said: “I don’t remember it, I passed out. Now sometimes when going up to the top of the ramp I freeze and don’t know what to do.” Her dad Mark, a paramedic, was at the skate park and checked Lily over before she was taken to hospital. He said: “I was worried about Lily’s neck but thankfully she was OK. I don’t want people thinking they can just go and drop in for the first time on a ramp like that. You have to train an awful lot. Nature dealt us a raw hand. We needed to focus our energy and enable her to be a great human being who can survive and prosper.”
In a BBC documentary tonight, brave Lily faces her fears and tries to put her accident behind her. Proud Mark said: “The wheelchairs are designed really differently, they’ve got shock absorbers on the back, they’ve got bright-coloured frames and skateboard wheels on the front so it looks like a cool piece on kit.”
Now she has her confidence back, the daredevil wants to carry on competing around the world and one day hopes WCMX will be included in the Paralympic Games. Lily also hopes that she will be able to inspire other wheelchair users to give the sport a try, and learn to pick themselves up again after a fall.
She says: “Even though there’s a few things that scare me, I know I’ll work my way back up.”
Defying Gravity: Our Lives is on BBC1, 7.30pm. Follow Lily on Instagram @lilyrice_wcmx