ON FRIDAY, April 23, 1999 Matt Plested was looking forward to the weekend, the last one before he married his fiancée the following Saturday.
A bit overweight at 92kg, Matt returned home from his job as an account manager that Friday evening full of the joys of life and looked forward to the next day, when he would be heading into Reading to buy his best man’s gift.
They say that when you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet and that’s exactly what happened to Matt.
At 2.30pm on Saturday, April 24, 1999 as he was riding into Reading, a tractor pulled out across the road in front of him. Both he and his motorbike ploughed straight into it.
Diagnosed with a broken back and neck, his C6 vertebrae had literally exploded on impact. In order to repair this critical part of the spinal column surgeons took bone from his pelvis, secured this with six pins and a metal plate. For four weeks, Plested lay paralysed from the neck down, terrified at the prospect he would never walk again.
Doctors even told his parents to prepare themselves for a son who would be unable move – the best they could ever hope for would be a life spent in a wheelchair with constant 24-hour care.
Ten years later, on a warm August morning in Tala, I meet Matt at his home, there, sitting in front of me is a slim, fit, good looking and articulate young man whose only visible sign of injury is the special knee support he uses for walking and a left arm that is all but useless.
Plested is a calm, generous and practical man, with a little bit of an obstinate, stubborn streak, but always blessed with a sterling devotion to friends and family
My most pressing question is how he managed to defy the doctors’ initial damning diagnosis.
“It was my physiotherapist who gave me the hope and motivation to try and walk again; he had a pretty blunt approach to things. The very first time we met, he told me: ‘You can either lie here in a state of despondency or we can work together to try and get some movement back in your body – it’s up to you.’
“And that was that. I went on to have intensive physiotherapy for seven hours a day, five days a week and in 10 weeks I eventually managed to get to my feet with the help of support bars, then I progressed onto a walking frame and finally a stick.
“I walked out of the hospital and on October 16, 1999 walked arm in arm down the aisle with my wife.
“That was the start of a brand new life in many ways, but I had also received a brain injury so could no longer work, as my ‘wiring’ in the brain had got a bit tangled up. I do get words the wrong way around if I am stressed or put under pressure. I also get easily agitated but, then again I couldn’t see myself just sitting at home doing nothing.
“There’s also a huge fear if having once been paralysed, you believe you will never be independent again; that if you stop the physio, the body might just slip back into that state.
“I know that’s a bit silly but it’s something so frightening that it spurred me on to keep on doing my physio sessions.
“It was during one of these that I was introduced to a mountain bike and I really liked it, so I went out and bought one, adjusted it so all the controls were on the right-hand side got special shoes that locked into pedals so both my feet were connected (but only one leg could actually do the pedalling) and I was off.”
At this point I wanted to know if he had been an aspiring athlete before his accident.
“No way: I was an armchair athlete, with no ambitions in that direction whatsoever, I was doing this because of my fear of going backwards and I could see how miraculously fitness training and physio had helped me walk again. I was hooked and there was no going back.”
After joining some famous friends including Mat Damon and Jensen Button on a sponsored cycle/run from John o’Groats to Land’s End, the one-legged, one-armed ‘peddler’ was on a roll and in search of yet more challenges.
In 2002, Matt was introduced to indoor track cycling, something he admitted was the first thing that had given him so much fun since riding his motorbike, then he progressed to the big boys’ velodrome stadium in Manchester and in one day he won the 3,000m, 1,000m and 200m races with times that were all beating the national average in his category.
Matt was on his way as a natural and almost fearless track racer and with his trainer devising a tough schedule, he arrived after only 10 months of training back at the velodrome, where he took the world record and a bronze medal.
In 2005, he was invited into the British cycling team to compete in the Paralympics World Cup which is the biggest event outside of the Paralympics and once again Matt showed he was made of the ‘right stuff’ by winning two world championships in his category.
All this in less than 10 years after his horrific accident, which leads me to ask what he is planning for the next decade.
“I am waiting to see if I have been considered for the Paralympics team for London 2012, which is about 1,000 days away, so I am maintaining my training here in Paphos and will go off next month to hopefully retain my title as winner of the Normandy 2-man, 54km race.
“I also keep up with other sports I enjoy, like snowboarding and kayaking, I keep going because that’s the name of the game in this life.”
I have described Matt as having a bit of a stubborn streak which, as we all know, when turned upside down is actually patience – a virtue I believe Matt had long before his accident. Now, a skilled athlete, doing what athletes tend to enjoy doing and competing at the very highest level, this has been the therapy through which he has managed to piece his life and body back together again.
It’s also nice to know that he would audibly groan at the very idea of being seen as heroic or in any way special, or having ‘triumphed over tragedy’ – he just isn’t that sort of chap.
He is, however, one of the very few who has played the most interesting game in the world and that is making the most of one’s best. His disability has now thrown an interesting light on him as an individual and one wonders if the ‘bundle of possibilities’ that he unearthed through his accident would ever have seen the light of day if that trip into Reading had been entirely uneventful.
