"I never wanted anyone to feel sorry for me"
Sammi Kinghorn was always very driven, but when she broke her back in a farm accident, she discovered a new goal
© Jude Edginton
- Laura Rutkowski
The 28-year-old was a double Paralympic medallist at Tokyo and is the world champion 100m wheelchair racer. Based in Cheshire, she grew up on a farm in the Borders. The 2017 Scottish Sportsperson of the Year, she was made an MBE in 2022 and presents BBC1’s Countryfile. In Paris, she will race in the T53 100m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 4x100m relay.
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SAMMI KINGHORN
This December, it will be 14 years since my accident. I was 14 years old, so I’ll have been in a wheelchair for as long as I was able to walk, which is mad. I still remember it like it was yesterday. My friend Caris and I were off school, because there was so much snow. We went to help my dad on the farm. He was following me with a forklift and I was walking in front of him slowly, just annoying him. He was beeping his horn and laughing. Then Caris stepped off to the side and, for some reason, I jumped onto part of the forklift, underneath the main arm. I don’t know why I did it, because I’d been told never to touch the machinery. I believed my dad had seen me, but he carried on with his job and it crushed me underneath.
The first feeling, before pain, before being scared, before anything, was guilt that I’d put my dad through this. I didn’t want him to lose his job [as a farm worker] and to lose me. There was no one else to blame. It was my fault. I was so young that in hospital I didn’t understand the consequences of breaking my back. I was just thinking, ‘Can someone let my teacher know I’m not going to be there for my chemistry test?’
I was in a spinal unit in Glasgow for six months. For the first three or four weeks, I genuinely believed I was going to be stuck in a bed for ever, because I’d never seen anyone in a wheelchair.
Later, I was taken to watch the Inter Spinal Unit Games at Stoke Mandeville [in Buckinghamshire]. While I was there, I tried every single sport: basketball, fencing, tennis, badminton, weightlifting and bowls. I saw a girl racing in a wheelchair – Nikki Emerson – and she had a silver frame with pink stars on it. I thought it looked so cool. I got into my first-ever racing chair, and Ian Thompson, the husband of Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, said, ‘You could be really good at this. You look really strong.’ That’s farm strength!
I genuinely believed I was going to be stuck in a bed for ever, because I’d never seen anyone in a wheelchair
Sammi
I don’t think I’ve ever told him how much those words motivated me, because it was just nice to hear that I could be good. Then that’s what I wanted to do.
I train twice a day, six times a week. I train in the gym three times a week, and the rest of the time in my wheelchair on rollers and on the track. I’m doing about 70 miles a week, and through the winter, I’ll do 100.
I try to eat very clean, avoiding processed foods, and as much local produce as I can – a lot of vegetables and fruit, yogurt with berries, higher carbs on higher-training days, protein so my muscles can recover as quickly as possible. I’m eating a lot of poke bowls.
I’ve got about 15 friends and family coming to watch me in Paris. As a family, we speak a lot more, spend a lot more time together, we’re a lot funnier and we’re probably a lot more empathetic now, seeing the world of disability. The first time my dad made a joke about the accident, I was like, ‘Hang on a minute. I don’t know if it’s time for that yet.’ But if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
My fiancé Callum is excited to watch me. We’re getting married in January in Dunbar. We met on Tinder and the night he was to pick me up for our first date, I told him about six times that I was in a wheelchair. He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Something I was always scared about was not feeling attractive, or not being wanted, thinking, ‘Will I ever have a boyfriend?’ I remember at one point saying to a boy, ‘I’ll never be able to walk along a beach with you ,’ because I watched romcoms and I thought that’s how love blossoms!
I did change because of the accident, but I was always very driven. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I was like, ‘Right, let’s get on with it.’ I always wanted to be more than just someone from the Borders – not that there’s anything wrong with that. I wanted to get out and do something.
© Jude Edginton
NEILL KINGHORN
SAMMI'S DAD
I’ve been a farm worker all my life. I’ve been working for this current family for 36 years, and Sammi was born here. Ever since she could walk, she’s always helped me. She loves lambing time. She always wanted to work with animals and go down the zoology route. We had a postmortem on a cow to see what had happened and the vet took the heart out to explain to Samantha how it all works. She took the heart to her mum… in the middle of the kitchen. She and her brother Christopher, who’s 32 now, were very competitive. They always had to try to beat each other. He left home to join the Army when he was 16.
In December 2010, it had been snowing for a week and I asked Samantha to do some chores for me. She was mucking about in front of my forklift, and then she disappeared. I thought she was waiting at the side. The next thing I remember is her running out in front of me and falling in the snow. I carried her inside and it took two and a half hours for an ambulance to arrive. One got stuck in the snow, so another one had to come. To this day, I still don’t know what happened. Did I get distracted or what? It shook her life to pieces. It was heart-breaking. We didn’t actually know she had climbed onto the forklift. She said she had slipped in the snow, but her injuries didn’t match that, and she told us at the hospital what had really happened.
The first time I walked into the spinal unit, that was the most scared I’ve ever been, because you see so many people who will never leave a bed. It was hard the first few times, sitting beside her in hospital. Then when she got her wheelchair, I saw her start to come back to life and she became stronger all the time. She was the glue that held us together as a family for a good few years during that time.
I’ve come to terms with it in certain areas, but now and again, I’ll have a guilt rush. Then I’ll look at her and say, ‘But she’s happy. She’s happy.’ We had to get a different house on the farm to function for someone in a wheelchair. The council came and said it would take many months to get the grants, so my boss, who owns the farm I work for, paid for the whole conversion, including a wet room with a shower chair. Samantha’s room is downstairs, so it’s fully accessible.
At school, they had an Evac chair that wheelchair-users are meant to have installed for a fire drill, and she said, ‘I’m not going in that.’ When her friends heard rumours that there would be a fire drill, Samantha would excuse herself to go to the toilet and get outside before the fire alarm went off.
Samantha is a more compassionate and caring person now than she’s ever been. I appreciate every day I’ve got now, and the people around me, because you take things for granted. But you never know what’s around the corner.
Every time Samantha’s won at the majors, I cry. Whatever she does in Paris, I’ll cry at the finishing line. What she’s dealt with in her life inspires me in my life. She’ll always say, ‘Dad, you’re my idol’ – but she’s my idol.
© Jude Edginton
ELAINE KINGHORN
SAMMI’S MUM
Once Sammi learnt to talk, she would talk non-stop. She’d always ask, ‘But why?’ She wanted details of everything. When she was growing up, she did ballet, gymnastics, rugby, hockey and riding. She was very sociable.
I used to be a carer, working with dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. Then I specialised in spinal cord injuries, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis, heart problems and stroke. I quit after Samantha’s accident in order to look after her, but my mothering took over. It’s probably best to stand back a little, because I’d do things for her that she was quite capable of doing herself. She said to me, ‘Mum, I want you to be my mother, not my carer.’ She had to be independent.
Straight after her accident, we didn’t realise what she’d done, so I said, ‘You’re probably just winded.’ She kept saying, ‘I don’t feel well, I don’t feel well.’ Then she said, ‘Mum, you need to call an ambulance. I think I broke my back.’
Neill was like, ‘How have you done that? Has the snow fallen on you?’ He couldn’t understand. The ambulance came and she had a puffer jacket on, and they had to cut it off. There were feathers everywhere. She was worrying about the jacket, because it was so expensive.
All she wanted when she came home was a Sunday roast
Elaine
At the hospital, a doctor and a nurse showed us into this little room to say they’d have to send her to Glasgow for an operation. When we saw her, we both ended up in tears. She just said, ‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m fine. I’ll think of something to do.’ She was so brave. We already felt bad and Neill felt so guilty – if she had blamed us, or not had the spirit she did to keep going, it probably would have torn us apart.
Her brother Christopher kept her spirits up in the hospital, singing silly songs to her. I cooked Christmas dinner and took it all up in boxes to Glasgow. Samantha’s favourite was sticky toffee pudding, so I brought that, too. She was in a brace, so she couldn’t eat lots, but at least what she had tasted good. She was so thin. All she wanted when she came home was a Sunday roast.
After the Inter Spinal Unit Games, she was so excited. She was like, ‘I want to try this. But it costs quite a bit.’ Her first chair cost £3,000. Our village raised some money – we had little old ladies sending letters with a fiver in. The local butcher’s, Waldie Family Butchers, had a jar on the counter for Sammi, and they still do!
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We’ve travelled to so many different places following Samantha around the world. The way she manages to get up and train the way she does – that’s commitment. Her confidence has grown. My husband is much more emotional, and we appreciate family time a lot more. Every time Samantha competes, I almost don’t want to look! My stomach’s going and I’m so nervous for her. Once it finishes, as long as she says, ‘I did my best, and I loved it,’ I feel so much better.
Authors
Laura Rutkowski
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