Total Rebuild

In 2015, BEN CHOW Almost Died In A Road Accident. A Year Later He Competed In His First Bodybuilding Contest.

- John Plummer

ON A BANK HOLIDAY IN MAY 2015, BEN CHOW WAS RIDING TO THE GYM WHEN HIS MOTORCYCLE COLLIDED HEAD-ON WITH A CAR. HE HIT THE VEHICLE WITH SUCH FORCE he flipped over its roof and rolled along the road before smashing through a fence and ending in someone’s garden.

Paramedics battled at the scene for 90 minutes to save Chow, who, despite being covered in blood, somehow retained consciousness throughout. He spent seven days in a trauma unit with an eight-inch laceration on his head and numerous other severe injuries, including the loss of a third of one of his quadriceps, which had been ripped out.

He was discharged in a wheelchair with 60 stitches in his head, unable even to stand and requiring so much help that he had to move back to his mother’s house. Six weeks later he began light rehab work in the gym on crutches—and less than a year later he finished second in his first-ever bodybuilding competition. It was a remarkable triumph over adversity for somebody who had never competed before and who still suffers from the fallout of such a terrible accident.

NEW GOALS

Chow had always been in shape. Before the accident, he was a personal trainer at the prestigious Ultimate Performance gym in Mayfair, London. But he never seriously considered competing. Afterward, things changed. “I went from being very active and busy to being largely confined to bed,” he explains. “I met my current girlfriend, Kristina Vassilieva, as a result of my pictures on Facebook, and we started chatting online.