Hamish McLachlan: After dark days, BMX champ finds the light

Before he became paralysed through a training drill in 2016, Aussie BMX champ Sam Willoughby was the best racer in the world. He opens up to Hamish McLachlan about facing up to his fears, getting through his worst days and meeting a guy who changed everything.

Sam Willoughby was the best BMX racer in the world in 2016. He had been for a number of years. Young, fit, healthy, and engaged to Alise Post, an Olympic silver medallist. Then, in an instant he became paralysed through a training drill. Sam spoke about facing up to his fears, getting through his worst days, finding a way to walk down the aisle, and meeting a guy called Bootie Barker who changed everything.

HM: In 2013 you were on the longest winning streak of any BMX rider in history. 13. Add to that a third BMX pro title, and by the end of ‘14, two world titles. Was the only thing that eluded you, from a BMX standpoint, Olympic gold?

SW: Yes. Everyone was saying to
me, “If you win the Olympic gold medal, you’ll be the greatest BMX rider of all time”.

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HM: In Rio at the Olympics, in the qualifying you produce the fastest lap, you’re the fastest qualifier, and you end up in the final in lane 1. It couldn’t have gone more perfectly.

SW: Everything was perfect. I’d worked with a sports psychologist since I was 14, and he and I had been through the London cycle, and then the four years into Rio. I had four years to think about what I did wrong in London when I won silver and I felt like I went in there with a flexible strategy to deal with everything I felt was going to pop up along the way. I look back at it now, and I did. I was perfect, until I wasn’t.

HM:What jump does your Olympic dream dissipate on in the final?

SW: The first jump.

HM: What happens?

SW: I had a good start, in the lead at the first jump, and the jump was too small for the amount of speed we had, so we had to try to almost wash speed off in the air by pushing our back wheels down. You kick your back wheel up at the last minute to get over the landing, and I just left it there a split second too long. To the naked eye you’d barely notice it, but I just tagged my back wheel and lost all my momentum. I still went into the first corner in third, and I just froze. This wasn’t supposed to happen, and then I made more mistakes and came across the line in fifth or sixth.

Sam Willoughby became wheelchair-bound after a fall in 2016.

HM:You decided the best way to recover was win the next race on the tour, so you go to Louisville.

SW: I went to Louisville with the plan that, if I could win, it would fix Rio. It was a two-day race, and I was in the lead both days. I left my back wheel down on a jump, again. Exactly the same as Rio.

HM:You got to training on September 10, and life changed forever.

SW: I was doing just a routine warm-up in the rhythm section, which is a bunch of little jumps in a row. Normally I would go through the whole straight on my back wheel. It takes a lot of balance to do that, so that was my signal to me in all my training that, if I could do that, I was balanced on the bike and switched on mentally. I was doing that, and going pretty fast on this particular day, and just over compensated, went up in the air and flipped off the back. I actually must have gone completely upside down, because I came down right on the top of my head and crushed my neck downwards.

HM: And you’re lying on the track thinking what?

SW: I remember thinking that I should be winded. I felt myself flipping, and I thought I was going to land on my back. It was going to hurt, and I’m going to be winded. But when I hit the ground, I felt no pain. Then I realised that I couldn’t feel my legs.

HM:Who comes to you?

SW: There was a female rider who races against Alise. She was sitting on one of the other jumps and had seen it happen, so she rushed over. I remember looking at her and I said: “Dani (George), I can’t feel my legs, I can’t feel my legs”. She didn’t even say anything, I think she just screamed for help.

HM: Are there medicos there at the track?

SW: The paramedics arrived after about 20 minutes. They didn’t really say anything to me, but they knew what I’d done. The paramedics strapped me to a backboard and called for a helicopter and took me to Scripps Mercy Medical Centre, in San Diego.

HM: What do you remember?

SW: They pulled me out of the helicopter, and the first memory I have is being pushed through the hall. There was a female nurse that came up and put her hand on mine. I looked up at her and she was crying. I just said: “Am I dying?” And she said: “You’ve sustained a severe neck injury, and we don’t know the outcome yet. We’re going to get
you stabilised”.

Sam Willoughby in action.

HM:You come out of the MRI, and?

SW: Once I’m out of the MRI I was just behind the curtain in emergency. A guy came in and just said, “We need to go to surgery now, you’ve broken your neck at C5,6, 7. C6 is crushing your spinal cord, and if we don’t relieve the pressure now, you’re chances of recovery are zero”.

HM: Life and death.

SW: When I woke up after surgery Alise was there. That was the first time I’d heard the word “paralysis”. A doctor came in, and he didn’t really say for sure or not for sure, he just said: “You need to understand that there’s a potential of you facing paralysis”. I remember just looking at Alise, and she had her hand on mine saying: “We’re going to get through this”. I was crying, she was crying, and all I could think about was not wanting her to go through this.
I said to her: “You’re not marrying a vegetable”.

HM: When do you get told you’re a C6 Incomplete Quadriplegic?

SW: Within 24 hours of the operation. They do they op, and then the surgeon came back around when Mum and Dad were there, about 36 hours later. They did a prick test. That’s when they go up and down my body with a sharp ended pin and prick you to see if there’s was any feeling. That decides what ASIA score you are. I was considered ASIA B, which meant no motor function below the level of injury, but there was some sensation. That’s what they told us. The incomplete part was really good. That was a positive.

HM: After ICU, you are moved to a spinal cord unit?

SW: After two and a half weeks they put me back on a medical flight and flew me to Colorado to the Craig Hospital. It’s highly renowned. They flew me there and I thought: “Good, I’m out of the negativity of ICU, this is a spinal cord unit. It’s about working hard and fixing yourself”. I got there, and they did the exact same test. They said: “You’re injury looks stable, you’re ASIA B incomplete”. It’s all insurance-based, so they said, “It’s not safe for you to try to learn to walk. Just forget that”.

Sam in hospital after his fall in 2016.

HM: What do you start doing?

SW: We started sneaking into the therapy hall at night!

HM: You were sneaking out in your wheelchair, down the therapy hall, with Alise as your accomplice.

SW: (laughs) Yep!

HM: Great. Is that where you find the vibration plate?

SW: I figured out where they kept that. I’d used a vibration plate in my training previously.

HM: Explain what it is.

SW: It’s a high-frequency plate on the ground. The theory behind it is it sends signals up, and it fires up your nerve endings to activate the fast twitch muscle.

HM:You were hopeful?

SW: I was. My therapist’s name was Brooke, and I said to her, “Can we use the vibration plate?” We’d been doing it for a week or so. Every day I went to therapy I just wanted them to try something progressive. It
was the same stuff, try to sit on the table, pick a marble up, try and
swat this balloon away. One day I was like: “Can we try the vibration plate?” And she said: “No, you’re not at that level”.

HM: When does Candy come into the picture?

SW: Brooke said, “On Friday, Candy’s going to come down. She the head of research and decides whether you’ve changed from ASIA B to C”. She comes down, and it was Friday of Thanksgiving week in America — the weekend where the USA BMX Pro Title is decided, my favourite week of the year. I thought, “I’m going to perform on Friday Thanksgiving week, just like normal”. Candy comes down, stands me up on it, and it’s 9am in the middle of the rehab hall. I’m trying so hard, and all of a sudden, she says: “All right, come down!” “Why? I thought I was killing it?” They lower the crane down, I sit on the edge of the mat table. I look down, and I didn’t know but I’d lost control and there was a turd on the vibration plate.

Sam Willoughby on his wedding day with his wife, Alise.

HM: Is that when you started to think, I’m not going to walk again?

SW: I definitely lost a bit of hope after that. I thought, “What do I do from here? I’m stuck in this rehab place for another month or two, I’m not allowed to work at anything that in my mind considers me a success. My only way out of this thing was to walk. If I don’t walk again, I’m useless as a human”.

HM:When do they discharge you?

SW: A month after that.

HM: Were you terrified to go home?

SW: I was terrified of anywhere I was going to go. When I got home, I didn’t leave the house. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want to be seen.

HM: Four months after being at home, your brother takes you to the NASCAR, and everything changes.

SW: My brother said: “There’s a NASCAR race in Fontana, let’s go”. I said: “I’m not going. I’m not leaving the house”. Matt said, “We’re going and that’s it!” And then I meet Bootie Barker there, and my life changes! He was Jeff Gordon’s head engineer for years, and now he’s the crew chief of a NASCAR team at the top level. And in a wheelchair with C6 injuries.

HM: Who introduces you to Bootie?

SW: My friend Mark Hayes who is in the motor game. Mark said, “At 10am you need to go to the number 13 truck. I need you to meet someone. Bootie Barker. He’s a great guy, I’ve known him for 30 years, but he’s in a wheelchair”. I didn’t want to go. I only wanted to talk to people who had my injury, that had recovered, and were walking.

HM: Has anyone who’s ever had your injury recovered and walked?

SW: I’d talked to people that had had neck injuries that had walked again, but no two injuries are ever the same. Everyone’s neck injuries are different. The spinal cord is basically a straw full of nerves, and you don’t know what different people have hit and haven’t hit. They were the only people I wanted to talk to. I felt like they had the answers for me.

HM: But you met Bootie and …

SW: Matt pushed me up the ramp into the back of this semi-trailer, and there’s Bootie, a big, strong-looking guy, bubbly and upbeat right away. “Hey Sam, so how long have you been hurt for?” I said: “Seven months”. He’s like, “Oh, cool. You look great! What are you gonna do now?” And I didn’t know how to answer the question. My answer to everyone previously was to try to walk. “I’m going to walk again”. My brother stepped in and he said, “Well, Sam’s doing a lot of rehab right now, he does it three times a day and he’s working his a--e off. He wants to walk at his wedding. When did you stop rehab?” And Bootie says: “Rehab? I didn’t do no rehab. I just said to them what the hell do I do to get out of here?” His mindset was infectious.

Sam with his wife, Alise.

HM:“Play on!”

SW: Play on — get back into the game. He was so pragmatic. Eventually I asked him, “What’s your injury?”, and he said “I ‘broked’ it at the C6”. I realised — that’s me. I said “How do you do all this? NASCAR is 36 weekends a year?” He said, “You just get on with it!” He pointed at my brother and said: “Me and you, we’re the same as him, we just have to drag ourselves around a little more”. That resonated with me and changed the way I looked at everything.

HM:That was the Sam Willoughby mark two life-changing moment?

SW: 100 per cent. I came home that day and we were on. There is a life to be had! It gave me a whole new outlook, and there was still this looming goal of walking and chipping away at that, but there was so much between that I had to work on. Walking didn’t have to define me. The ultimate challenge was to just figure out how to do things normally again.

HM: And then you got a job — you became your wife’s coach!

SW: That was in April 2017, and the world championships were at the end of July. We just thought, “Let’s work at this together and go for a world title”, so we did. I’d go to the track with her, then she’d train, and I had half the hand and arm movement I do now. She’d take me there, wheel me out and we’d discuss things. It was a team effort, and she felt like she had someone in her corner. By the end of July, she’d won the world title, so we thought, “This works — let’s keep doing this!”

HM: Now you are married, World championship-winning coach. You got married at the end of that year.

SW: While I was coaching, I was still working away at this whole trying to stand and walk down the aisle thing. No leg movement, but I thought I could put knee braces in place, lock them straight, and use my arm strength that I had back to use crutches.

HM: And how’d you go with that?

SW: I ended up doing it.

HM: When you sit here now — how do you view the world and how is it different than how you did on the morning of September 10?

SW: I don’t know if I view the world much differently, I just embrace the struggle. Embrace the struggle to be the best version of you. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is that you’re not entitled to anything. I worked my a--e off to try and walk, and I may never walk again, but embracing the challenge of trying and putting your best foot forward every day — that’s what creates character.