Team GB cyclist on horrific crash and new life
4 hours agoLaura DevlinNorfolk
@vicswilliamsonA former GB cyclist whose chance of Olympics glory was wrecked by a horrific crash has spoken of her career “highs and lows” as she confirmed her retirement.
Sprinter Vicky Williamson, of Hevingham, Norfolk, was set for Rio 2016 when she fractured her neck and back, dislocated her pelvis and slipped a disc, and was lucky not to be paralysed.
The 32-year-old fought back from her ordeal to compete again – in two different disciplines – but has now told the BBC about her decision to retire from competitive sport and start a new chapter in her life.
“It’s been a lot to take in – those that have been in my position know when it’s time to switch career, there’s a lot of emotions,” she said.
Getty Images“There’s loss of identity – who am I without my sport, [when] that’s what everyone knows me as.
“What do I actually want to do now that I don’t do sport, when you’ve done one thing for such a long time?”
Back in January 2016, Williamson was one of Great Britain’s rising stars and on track for the Rio Olympics when her dreams ended with disaster with the crash in Rotterdam.
She needed three operations, with surgeons using five screws to keep her back in one piece.
After four weeks in hospital, she took her first steps on her long road to recovery.
@vicswilliamson“I remember it quite vividly although I don’t remember the exact crash – that was wiped from memory,” Williamson told BBC Look East’s Susie Fowler-Watt.
“Now it’s 10 years on, so it’s a good time for me to reflect back on the highs and lows of everything I went through.
“It was a journey, with definite low points, from when I realised that the Rio Olympics was no longer on the cards, and then great highs as I made my way back into sport, and achieving things I never thought were going to be possible again.”
The sportswoman, who attended Norwich High School for Girls, said it had been “massively difficult” to cope with such catastrophic injuries and the hammer-blow to her career when elite sport had been her life.
“Any athletes that have been injured will understand; it’s your identity, it’s taken away from you, and in the blink of an eye anything can change,” she said.
“Obviously my accident was particularly bad and was life-changing.
“I can look back and be proud of everything that I’ve overcome, but it’s been difficult.”
@vicswilliamsonRemarkably, Williamson got back into track cycling in the velodrome “752 days after the crash”, and went on to compete in the World Cup and World Championships in 2019.
“Unfortunately because of circumstances out of my control I didn’t have enough points for Tokyo 2021, which then left me having done all this rehab, and my end goal was to get to the Olympics,” she explained.
“I always knew I wanted to get back on the bike, when that’s no longer there it’s like ‘who am I now and where do I want to take my life, given that strict one goal has now gone?”
Williamson said she then stumbled across a social post for “powerful women for bobsleigh”.
“Next thing you know, I went to testing, I pushed quite well and was offered a bobsleigh season,” she said.
@vicswilliamson“It was quite a mad twist of fate or luck that I had seen this advert and ended up in bobsleigh, so I don’t know if bobsleigh found me or I found bobsleigh,” she laughed. “It was a bit crazy.”
She won a place in the GB bobsleigh team between 2020 and 2022 and competed in the Königssee IBSF World Cup five years to the day from her accident.
It was one of several international contests she took part in as a bobsledder, but Williamson admitted “cycling was where my heart was”.
So much so, that she took a three-month break from bobsleighing to try to make it back onto the national cycling team for the Paris Olympics, and was disappointed to have just missed out on one of the three targets.
It meant her dreams of competing in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as a bobsledder were then set adrift, but she said it was a matter she was “prepared for”.
Williamson has since stepped away from elite competition, but not sport.
“I’m in a place now where it marked 10 years [since the accident] and I thought it was the perfect time to close that chapter and for me to announce the next chapter of my life.”
@vicswilliamsonWilliamson, who now lives in Manchester but still returns to see her parents in Hevingham, said she was “very passionate” about teaching Reformer Pilates and her work as a functional fitness coach.
“I’m also taking my story to various businesses and different areas and all walks of life and just spreading my story in the hope to inspire others,” she said.
“I am just enjoying having nice connections with people and using my knowledge to help others.
“This time last year I was at a point where I thought ‘will I ever have the same feeling that I did from sport?’
“Obviously I’m not competing on a day to day, so I don’t have that, but it still gives me a sense of purpose and enjoyment, which is the most important thing.
“Health and fitness has been such a key part of my career – the injury, coming back from the injury – that is the industry I need to be in.”
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