NO LEGS, NO LIMITS

Double amputee Daisy-May is taking the child modelling scene by storm with appearances at three top fashion shows.

- LINDSAY DE FREITAS

IN MANY ways she’s just like any other nine-year-old. At school she prefers English to maths, and she just loves gymnastics.

But in other ways, Daisy-May Demetre has a life – and flight schedule – most other girls her age can only dream of.

In April the little girl from Birmingham in the UK did a confident cartwheel on the runway at London Kids Fashion Week.

Last month she sashayed down the catwalk during New York Fashion Week. And a few days later she delighted the doyennes of the Paris fashion scene when she strutted down the runway for children’s luxury designer Lulu et Gigi in a show at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

What makes Daisy-May’s modelling career even more remarkable is her disability. She’s a double amputee and all her runway appearances have been made on bladerunner-type prostheses similar to the kind worn by Paralympian Oscar Pistorius.

Like Pistorius, she was born with fibular hemimelia, a rare defect in which part or all of the fibula bone is missing. As a result, she had to have both legs amputated at just 18 months old and now uses prosthetic limbs to get around.

She’s the first child double-amputee to take part in international fashion shows.

“She walked it [Paris Fashion Week] like a professional and had fun doing it,” Daisy-May’s dad, Alex Demetre, said of his daughter’s record feat.

The little girl herself says simply, “I feel proud of myself.”

DAISY-MAY is a sight to behold when playing in the park or working out in the gym with her dad. She runs, skips, jumps, leaps off swings and makes mincemeat of the monkey bars. It’s hard to believe her parents feared she might never even be able to walk.

When she was born, she had one tiny fibula bone in her right leg and none in the other.

Without fully formed fibulas, her feet didn’t develop normally.