Going for gold, the athlete with a heart of 24-carat courage
did this happen?” but you can’t torment yourself because you can’t change what has happened.
‘I read about stem cell treatment and the hopes of people paralysed like me walking again but I’m not going to sit waiting for it to happen.
‘Realistically, even if that does happen, it would take years to build up the muscles in my legs again and I’m not going to let life pass me by just in the hope of something not yet developed. I have to go out there and make things happen for myself.’
Her physiotherapist in the Southern General helped to open a new chapter by taking her to Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, the national centre for disability sports.
Samantha says: ‘I loved everything but as soon as I tried wheelchair racing I knew I’d found my new sport.
‘I was born for it – I’ve got really broad shoulders – and at my first event at the London Marathon in 2012 I finished in second place behind the then British champion.’
The family’s habit of finding positives among the negatives also helped motivate Samantha’s shocked local community. Initially everyone was simply delighted to see her come home and get back to her friends at Earlston High School, though Samantha admits she was worried what people would think of her disability.
She said: ‘I was the only person in a wheelchair and that was hard, but my best friend, Caris Page, was having none of it. She was really firm, saying, “You’re coming with me and that’s it.” Once I got there it was fine, with everyone wanting a shot in my wheelchair and soon I was doing anything my friends were doing.’
As her sporting career took off, local people helped raise funds for a racing chair – and now take a delight in all Samantha’s achievements.
Fortunately, Mrs Kinghorn was a specialised carer for people with MS and spinal injuries, so she knew how to support her daughter. She says: ‘It wasn’t easy to separate my professional response – which is that people have to learn for themselves what they can do – and my automatic personal reaction of wanting to do everything for Samantha. Our house was also no longer suitable, so Douglas Tweedie, the farm owner, transformed the old farmhouse for us, with a big bedroom and wet room and a new kitchen with everything at the right height for her wheelchair.’
Samantha, now 20, dismisses any idea that life is a burden when faced from a wheelchair. She recalls: ‘We had a counsellor in hospital who asked me, “Have you cried yet?” When I said no, he said, “You need to cry because otherwise when you get older it will all hit you at once and you’ll be depressed.”
‘I wanted to say, “Where’s your wheelchair? How did you feel?” He didn’t understand what I was feeling and that everyone is different.’
At the spinal injury unit, she met and was inspired by Jo Butterfield, a disabled athlete in the discus event who was diagnosed with a spinal tumour in 2011, which resulted in paralysis from the waist down.
Samantha says: ‘She was going through it at the same time. There were people who wouldn’t face the fact they couldn’t walk. They wouldn’t get up and go to the gym.
‘It would have been easy to take that same outlook but Jo and I had our own way of doing things, which was to always keep going.’
The catastrophe that changed her life has introduced her to many positive experiences, she says, which were unlikely to happen otherwise. Now, she is often invited to schools and youth groups to talk about her experience – but is far too modest to see herself as inspirational.
She says: ‘I’m happy to speak but everyone has to find their own inspiration. If I can make any difference at all, especially to kids with disabilities, then I’m delighted but I don’t think there’s anything I can’t do.’
Then she reconsiders. ‘Stairs – I can’t physically do stairs – but everything else is fine. My friends don’t see the wheelchair, they just see me. They organise things and I say, “Is it wheelchair accessible?” and they go, “Oh yeah, right – I better check.”’
For now, her focus is on the 100, 400 and 800 metres in Brazil.
She says: ‘My family and friends have been amazing but I don’t feel any weight of expectation – any expectation comes from myself.
‘I’ll always wish the accident had never happened. Not just because of what it did but mainly because of the pain it put my family through. I have to make the most of life.’
I don’t think that there’s anything I can’t do – except for stairs