''I'm Still Cycling My Way To Gold'

A cycling accident left Palesa Manaleng paralysed from the waist down, but she has refused to let her disability stand in the way of her dreams

- Kerryn Massyn

One sunny day in September 2014 I said a short goodbye to my new housemates – a bunch of guys I’d only known for a couple of weeks – and headed off for a cycle around my neighbourhood, Westdene.

Sport has always been my escape; when I was younger I did everything from tennis to swimming, but after school cycling became my sport of choice. There was something so freeing about it – the wind against my face when I picked up speed, watching the world blur by as I peddled – and a long cycle became my way of dealing with life.

Ordinarily I’d head out to Roodepoort and Krugersdorp for a long ride but, for some reason, I decided to stay close to home that morning. The ride was like any other, until my brakes failed and I hit a pavement, which sent me flying into a palisade fence. I remember lying on the ground, thinking I’d have to walk my bike back home – but I couldn’t move my legs. It’s all hazy from there, and I think I must have blacked out; all that I can remember after that is waking up in a hospital bed, and the staff telling me I’d been badly injured.

The day my life changed

I’d sustained a head injury, a spinal dislocation, broken ribs, a punctured lung and a shattered shoulder. Numerous surgeries followed, but the doctors told me the worst news: I had a T9/T10 spinal cord injury, which meant that I’d never walk again. I’d lost the use of everything below my waist, and I was a paraplegic.

I was working as a journalist at the time of the accident but I was in no state to go back to the office. Because I wasn’t on medical aid, either, I spent five long months recovering at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Joburg. It was the first time that I’d been in a government hospital, and the treatment I received from the nurses was nothing short of amazing.