A year after Alex Danson suffered a freak injury on holiday, her sister was paralysed in a crash. The athlete sisters tell their story
“I think most of the time I’m still just the same,” Claire Danson says as we sit beneath a cold and darkening sky in the secluded gardens attached to the spinal unit at
Salisbury hospital. The European triathlon champion, who won her 30-34 age category in June and then finished fifth overall when racing against men at the
London triathlon in July, smiles in her wheelchair. Claire has been paralysed from the waist down since her bike was hit by a tractor while she was training on 28 August.
She will never walk again and yet, as the remarkable 30-year-old explains, this is not her most difficult challenge. She is being tested in all kinds of ways – from basic bodily functions to psychological adversity. Claire looks up with clear eyes as complex emotions flicker across her face.