Paralympic gold medallist Alexa Leary reveals she didn’t want to live but is now loving life
Golden girl Alexa Leary reveals a random stranger saved her from ending it all when she’d “had enough”. FULL INTERVIEW
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The family of Paris Paralympics golden girl Alexa Leary have been banned from more cafes on the Gold Coast than her father Russell Leary can care to remember.
Alexa, who recovered from a near-fatal, high-speed road cycling accident to stun the world in Paris just months ago, always had plenty of energy – but it could be problematic.
As her dad puts it when asked what she was like as a kid before her now infamous crash, he says: “She was hypo.”
She was diagnosed with ADHD by age eight, prompting an unflattering but amusing nickname.
“(She was) an absolute terrorist. We couldn’t call her Bin Laden – people said you can’t. So we started calling her Binny.
“You’d take her to a coffee shop and she would wreck the playrooms. We got banned from more coffee shops on the Gold Coast than you could believe. We decided to move to Yamba to give her and the kids a more simple life.”
One of seven Leary offspring, Alexa was “crazy sporty”, throwing herself into basketball, netball, swimming and eventually triathlons.
Her appetite for sport is what her family says “kept her on the straight and narrow”.
“She was very sporty – and sport is what got her through her ADHD.”
As a youngster, she proved to be a talented swimmer, winning golds at the Australian schools championships in her mid-teens and state and Australian ones before getting on the podium at the world titles in Switzerland in 2019.
She was ambitious with her heart set on Olympic triathlon – and a determination to match it.
Asked to describe his daughter – who defied medicos by surviving her head slamming into Noosa bitumen at 70km/h in a horror cycling accident that left many doubting she would ever walk or talk again – Mr Leary says: “Pig headed. Determined. What she wanted, she’d go and get. And she did. I think that is the reason she survived.”
Her triumphs of late since her recovery have been well-documented. At the Paralympics in Paris she won gold in the women’s 100-metre freestyle S9, setting a world record. She also helped win gold in the mixed four by 100-metre medley 34 point, setting a Paralympic record, and a silver in the mixed four by 100-metre freestyle 34 point. A year earlier at the World Para Swimming Championships she won gold in the women’s 100m freestyle S9, and silver in the women’s 50m S9.
But getting to that point post-accident has been an enormous battle, a tale of not just overcoming physical and mental challenges - but one of survival itself. Not just from the horror accident but the deep, dark emotional hole she found herself in at times when it almost became too much for her (but we’ll get to that).
They have also had to battle misunderstanding, and questioning of her injury – given a traumatic brain injury is often invisible.
That fateful day of her accident in Noosa in July, 2021 wasn’t her first on the bike. In March on the way to a pro race she had hit a car. On another occasion she collided with a bus – or as Belinda describes it “we had a bit of an altercation with (one) and we both ended up in hospital”.
The day “when our lives changed forever”, as Russell describes it, Belinda was at Pilates and Russell was out with her on a bike too, but he was well behind the pack.
“She was in the elite group that day and normally we go out the back of Noosa Pomona. It was a massive climb and she’d never got over with the elite guys so we’d go back the other way but this one time she got up and over the top.”
Alexa: “I stopped and had my gels, messaged my dad saying ‘I can’t believe it’. I’ve made it, 80kms with the top A-grade bunch.”
But her training ride triumph would quickly turn to disaster.
“I had a beanie on, and I put it in my back pocket. I never tightened my helmet.”
Pinging along at 70km/h her front wheel clipped the bike in front of her. She went flying.
“(My helmet) flung off, without protection on my head - hitting that road so hard on my left.”
Belinda who missed frantic calls from Russell in the aftermath said: “I just thought here we go again – we’d had a few little stacks and I just thought ‘oh yeah, It’s just another little stack – she’ll be fine’.
“But Russ was on the phone to me going ‘it’s really bad this time’.”
She was unconscious with broken ribs, scapula, leg and skull along with a punctured lung.
They all ended up at Sunshine Coast Hospital and were told she would be rushed by helicopter to Brisbane but she might not make the trip. If she did make it, she’d have no quality of life, the medicos told the Learys.
“I walked in and her head was swollen already. It was a nightmare,” Belinda recalls.
Russell vividly remembers the phone call no parent should have to take, at 3.59am later that morning from the hospital: “The lady goes ‘We need to take the scalp off now otherwise she will pass’. I said ‘Well what are you ringing me for – just take the scalp off’.”
All up, they were told to say goodbye to their sporty, hyperactive, beautiful daughter eight gruelling times during her stay in intensive care.
When he life support was turned off, Alexa full of fighting spirit and tenacity, began breathing for herself.
She spent weeks in a coma, in the intensive care unit.
She spent nine weeks in a neurological ward.
She was in Royal Women’s Hospital Brisbane for 111 days. She had six weeks in the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit.
At one point the family hired what they called a “quantum healer”. “She goes to work at night, working into the universe with the spirits”, Russell explains.
“My head said to me if she’s a fraud, we win because karma will get her. If she’s good, we win also. So we can’t lose. She came back the next morning and said ‘I’ve spoken to Alexa, she wants you to rub Voltaren on the back of her neck’.
“And that’s what (Alexa) always wanted. She never knew this, this lady. So that was hoo-doo-voo-doo to us.”
She also told them she could “see three medals at the Paralympics”.
Russell says early on in her treatment: “I couldn’t look at her face, it was just too bulbous and blown up - so I’d just stay down on the feet and rub her feet.”
Asked about Alexa’s first words when she came to and could talk, Russell says: “She sang. She had no idea who Belinda was for a while.”
Belinda: “She always knew Russell was dad but she thought I was just a friend of his.”
It was just the beginning of a long journey of recovery, one full of ups and downs, daily rehab and misunderstanding aplenty given the invisibility of her traumatic brain injury.
Alexa, passionate about raising awareness around the impacts of traumatic brain injuries which can be unseen, says: “People need to be more respectful to us and our brains because it’s invisible. You would never think I have a disability.”
But it manifested in subtle ways – there was anger at times, but also physical ailments. After learning to walk and talk again – a personal journey that she took the country on with her as part of her viral Move For Lex campaign - the mental battles were ginormous.
At times she found herself in a dark place mentally.
So dark she tried to end it all.
She has trouble with her memory – but she remembers that moment – and so does her family all too well. The now-world record holder in the pool and recently crowned Gold Coast Bulletin Woman of the Year by Harvey Norman reveals a dark time before her Paralympic success: “I was really low - and because my emotions hit me a bit harder than ever really, I was very depressed. Like extremely depressed. I was like, I don’t want to be here because there’s no point, really. I was just very sad, most days and that’s what brings along anger. When you’re so sad about your own life, you’re going to be angry to the world. So that’s how I saw it.”
One of her two brothers dropped her off for a walk one day at a Noosa track – and they had become separated. There was no reception and despite her brother’s constant calls of worry, she couldn’t answer. She was alone, thinking about the state of her life.
As her father Russell describes it at that point: “She was 21, had no hair, no licence, no friends. We’d lost her, couldn’t find her. Jack had taken her for a walk and we couldn’t find her.”
Alexa recalls: “I was so down on myself. I did get this lady, when I tried to do something to myself, she did catch me. I don’t even know her name. I’ve got goosebumps (talking about this).
“She caught me, and she said ‘what are you doing?’. She walked with me. I’ve got goosebumps everywhere. She just walked with me for a little bit.”
She recalls it was a long time before she was reunited with her brother: “I let him know, it was two hours away for him, so he obviously thought I was gone. I remember when I got in the car, I messaged him and I said, ‘I’m here’. He’s balling his eyes out and so was I, I was crying with him. It was just a tough moment for me because I was happy to leave because of how sad I was.”
Her father Russell recalls: “Thank heaven we found her because that night, she was gone. She had tried a couple of other times. We had to work out we’ve got to fight through this. A lot of brain damaged people commit suicide because they lose everyone because of their anger.
“With brain damage, your emotions are high and low so you can have it every emotion within a minute. Happy, sad, angry, all over the place - so it’s hard to keep on the straight and narrow. She won’t go on medication - she doesn’t want to. I said to her ‘if you can self-medicate yourself and you’re aware of how to calm yourself in situations, knock yourself out.
“She lost all her friends. They all walked, except for two which were just incredible – because of her anger.
“Belinda was the best. She learned it first. You don’t react to anything. So then we worked out how to work her through it. Instead of triggering her, we brought her back the other way.”
Alexa explains: “It’s like someone’s yelling at me in my head - I find it this way, it’s like I’m at war in my head. You could say there is a country (in there) fighting against each other.
“It’s like my brains, are fighting against each other - little parts my happiness, my anger, that’s all fighting and it’s constant with me. That’s why in a day I can be sad, happy, angry, depressed in a second, in a minute because my brain is constantly fighting just to have one - just to be one for that little part of the day and not every emotion during the day.”
She adds: “My brain hurts, my left side, it’s like someone’s kikcing or punching my left side here and I get this little trigger - it hurts my head so badly.”
There are other ongoing impacts. “My left side got the worst damage but it goes the opposite and makes my right physically damaged.
“That’s why I wear crutches and why my right hand won’t work for a while after I race or my leg because of the damage from the brain.
“I used to be right handed now I’m a lefty. Sometimes I make myself ambidextrous because I’m like right, come on, work with me. On a happy day, that I’m feeling good, I’m like come on, you can brush your teeth.”
It has been a long journey - and a worthwhile one. Alexa touched the hearts of the nation when she won in the pool in Paris, watched on by her beaming and tearful parents.
They were there again, by her side and cheering her on along with her brothers and sisters and boyfriend as she won both Champion of Sport and the overall title at the Gold Coast Bulletin Women of the Year awards on Saturday.
After an ecstatic Alexa danced her way to the stage, before telling the 450-strong crowd in a rousing speech: “I just want to say a big thank you to the Gold Coast Bulletin as well as my amazing family who have kept me here.
“It makes me want to cry. All the support from you guys is amazing, and my friends, and the support crew – especially Jon Bell my coach. We got this – but not only that we also got the gold together and it will forever be something in my heart.
“I live with traumatic brain injury – but you know what I push so hard and I’m so proud of myself for how far I’ve actually come.”
Taking her back to that fateful moment in 2021 on the training ride, when she took off her beanie and had her helmet loosely back on her head, she says: “I don’t really remember it if that makes sense.
“If I think about it and go deep with it, I’m very proud of myself that I’m here but at the same time I’m happy the accident happened. I know that’s not something to say but I’m happy because look how far it’s got me and how far I’m going through life.
“I’ve got the best parents ever, my family, all my siblings. It happened for a reason, that’s how I see it.
“I don’t want to have my old life because I love my life now. Before the accident, I don’t think I did love life. Now I’m just so much happier within myself and happy with who I am now.
“I just keep going, every day. Every day I keep striving and thriving. I see life like that. Every day is a new day to be even better than you were yesterday.
“Sometimes I make it worse but try to boot myself out of that being like ‘Lex, look how far you have come – you’ve done it – you’re living.”
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