Simon Richardson aims to get back on bike - but needs another operation

Former Paralympic champion Simon Richardson hopes to be back on his bike this year for a charity ride from Paris to Swansea – but says he won’t be able to do unless he first has surgery on his back.

Richardson, aged 48, was training for the London 2012 Paralympic Games when he was hit by a drunk driver near Bridgend in August 2011. The crash left him with a fractured spine and broken pelvis and breastbone.

He has already undergone a series of operations on his back, but complications with his spine mean he needs to undergo surgery again, and he hopes to have the procedure done privately to minimise the disruption to his schedule.

In an interview with ITV Wales Richardson, who won two gold and one silver medal at the Beijing Paralympic Games in 2008, said, “Pre-accident I've gone from 500 miles a week down to at the moment maybe ten miles a month – it's when I can feel totally out of pain enough to get on the bike and actually ride it.

He continued: “I've had multiple operations, my back put back together because it's been broken in about seven places, and it's been recovering so we thought, but of recent months I've had a couple of lower discs start to collapse and disintegrate a bit.”

There is no guarantee a further operation will succeed, but Richardson is optimistic it will enable him to resume cycling in earnest.

He said: “Best scenario is I wake up from the operation, I move my legs, I start physio almost
straight away, I get back on the bike within two months and I'm riding Paris to Swansea.

“Otherwise,” he added, “I live with pain for the next fifty odd years. And I just can't do that.”

The driver of the vehicle that struck him, farmer Edward Adams, was jailed for 18 months in August 2012 for dangerous driving and failing to stop, and received a concurrent three month prison sentence for drunk driving.

On Christmas Day last week, Richardson tweeted: "Just found out the farmer who almost killed me in 2011 has just died."