A PARALYMPIAN has been inspiring youngsters to be the best they can as part of a special school initiative.
Wheelchair basketball player Wendy Smith represented England at the 2004 Athens Paralympics and has racked up a huge list of sporting honours playing for Essex Outlaws She was told she would never walk again after suffering severe spinal injuries in a horrific motorbike accident when she was just 17.
Wendy was in hospital for a year but bounced back through sheer determination.
“I battled for years at the gym, devising my own rehab plan and now walk with sticks,” she said.
“Gratefully, I can still ride horses and my mountain bike too but my main goal in life is to run again - and I am sure I will.”
- Inspirational: Wendy Smith at Tendring Primary School
She is also a trained sports psychologist, basketball coach and referee, and has just taken up sprint kayaking.
Wendy visited thrilled pupils at Tendring Primary School as part of the Be the Best You Can Be programme, which was launched after the last London Olympics.
- Pupils hanging on to every word
PE co-ordinator Jane Dann said: “It was brilliant. She told the whole all about her life, her accident and the choices she has made.
“Then she went round all five classes and has been walking with her sticks which the children found really inspirational.”
- Wendy explains how she became a Paralympian
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