We’re speaking to you as an elite wheelchair tennis player who is currently ranked number one in the UK and number five in the world. You haven’t always been a wheelchair user. Can you tell us about your journey?

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I grew up a typical able-bodied person. My parents always encouraged me and my brother to be involved in sport. When I was growing up, badminton ran through our family. I also had a love of horse riding. Those two sports were a massive part of my life. I went to university and studied a diverse degree in science, management of exercise and health. I walked straight into a sales marketing job and with my first month’s pay packet I took my direct motorbike license. I passed it first time and then twelve days later I went over to Swanage on my bike. I don’t remember the actual accident, but I went round a corner, and I didn’t make it. I hit a telegraph pole and a post box that were side by side. If I’d gone maybe one meter one side or the other, I probably would have just slid, but I didn’t. The only memory I have is that I couldn’t feel my legs. I’d severed my spinal cord at T4. I spent about ten months in hospital being rehabilitated. If you think back, 2001 was when the internet was just emerging. You couldn’t just go online to find out what happened, what I’d done to myself, what charities there were out there. But yeah, the result is I’m a T4 para(plegic), there’s no surgery that fixes the spinal cord and so it is what it is for the rest of my life.