BMX champ Sam Willoughby can count on plenty of support as he battles to walk again, writes Reece Homfray
SAM Willoughby has always been a racer and a fighter. He will need plenty of fight and will receive plenty of love and support as he battles to walk again, writes Reece Homfray.
- Road2Recovery: How you can help
- Main story: SA BMX champ breaks neck in training
- BMX professionals aren’t big kids — they are extraordinary athletes
SAM Willoughby has always been a racer and a fighter.
Ever since his BMX dream was born in his backyard in Adelaide’s southern suburbs when he would sticky tape an ice cream container lid with the No. 1 to his handlebars and pretend he was the world champion.
He chased the dream at just 16 when he packed his bags and, along with his blond hair and flashy smile, left his Trott Park home to begin racing in the US.
And he lived the dream in 2012 when he became the BMX world champion at just 20 years old.
The softly-spoken kid from Down Under had become a man, took on the best in the world and won by punching well above his weight. He did it again in 2014, in between an Olympic silver medal, Oceania titles, UCI Supercross crowns and US national victories.
Now Willoughby faces a fight of a very different kind — the fight to simply walk again after breaking his neck while training in America this month.
What had been a regulation training day at Chula Vista in his US base of San Diego on September 10 suddenly turned very serious when he crashed, fractured his C6 and C7 vertebrae which compressed his spinal cord and left him without movement from the chest down.
He’d only been back in the US a short time after a whirlwind trip back to Australia following the Rio Olympics where he finished sixth in the final.
Willoughby was bitterly disappointed after Rio. He looked like a man on a mission in qualifying, was flawless going through his semi-final heats undefeated and started the final from the inside lane next to his Australian teammate Anthony Dean.
But the final didn’t go to plan, Willoughby finished sixth while Dean crashed and finished eighth.
Afterwards Willoughby took an hour to return to the track to speak with the media, having processed what just happened.
As shattered as he was, he remained as calm, measured, philosophical and even upbeat because his fiancee Alise Post had just moments earlier won a silver medal in the women’s race for the US.
“I’m ecstatic for Alise, no one deserves it more than her,” he said at the time.
That pretty much sums up Willoughby. A ferocious competitor who accepted nothing but victory on the bike, and then the loving, caring, kind-hearted person off it.
Willoughby also revealed he had been riding with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee for six months and a month earlier had written himself a letter which he read on the day of the final in Rio.
“When you finish a race (like that) you just want to fall off a cliff but I wrote myself a letter that I read this morning and there are still plenty of great things I have in my life,” Willoughby said after the final.
“I’m getting married next year, I have great people in my corner and the sun will come up tomorrow so life will go on.”
Willoughby still has all that — a supportive and loving family including Post who he will marry next year.
His network of friends both in BMX and the wider cycling community extends far and wide and even bigger is his army of supporters that stretches around the world.
If social media is good for one thing it’s times like these when messages of support for Willoughby came flooding in after his accident.
Complete with the hashtag #strengthfor91, it is a reminder that not only in victory but also in defeat and in the most trying of times like these, everyone is right behind him.
A website has been set up for people to send messages of support and donate towards Willoughby’s rehabilitation costs at www.road2recovery.com/strengthfor91