Commonwealth hopeful Melanie inspires kids with her courage after battling back from horror crash

Melanie Woods doesn’t remember the exact moment that changed her life for ever – when a car struck her from behind and paralysed her. But she’ll never forget realising that she’d not be able to walk again.

Melanie had been out for a Saturday afternoon cycle ride in the countryside near Inverness in January 2018, when the crash happened.

She lay injured on the side of the road as it dawned on her that she no longer had any feeling in her legs. “The paramedic kept asking me to wiggle my toes. But I don’t think I answered because I knew I couldn’t and I knew what that meant,” says the Paralympian, who was just 23 at the time and working as a PE teacher in Inverness. “I just closed my eyes and kept them closed.”

As well as suffering a broken leg and pelvis, Melanie had eight fractured vertebrae and her spinal cord was severed. She was to spend seven tough months in hospital undergoing rehabilitation, while coming to terms with being paralysed from the waist down.

“It took a long time for it all to sink in,” admits the 27-year-old, who cried the first time she sat in a wheelchair. “I remember thinking: ‘This is so, so hard, I can’t see how it’s going to ever get better.’

“Simple things were a challenge and so much was out of my control. I’d set myself daily goals to feel like I was achieving something and to see myself becoming independent again.”

As her recovery advanced, Melanie’s thoughts turned to sport once more. And after leaving hospital, she researched para sports while living with her parents in Glasgow. “I was keen to see what was out there.”

Almost a year to the day after her accident, Melanie went along to check out the wheelchair racing at Red Star Athletics Club for people with disabilities.

“I just went to