91Èȱ¬

Team GB rower Georgina Brayshaw is ready to "prove people wrong again" at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

As she prepares to compete at the world's biggest sporting event, the 30-year-old looks back at how far she has come since suffering a trauma as a child and the motivation it still gives her.

When Brayshaw was 15, she had a horse riding accident that resulted in what doctors believed at the time were life-changing injuries.

“I was absolutely horse mad growing up," Brayshaw told 91Èȱ¬ South Today.

“I went out riding with my friends, and we were galloping through fields. We approached some roads, and I couldn’t slow my horse down.

“He spun on the road and slid over, and I landed on the tarmac. The air ambulance came, and I was in a coma for nine days. When I woke up, I was paralysed down my left-hand side."

The days that followed were filled with uncertainty for Brayshaw and her family as they were told that life would never be the same again.

“The nurses weren’t sure how I would wake up from the coma," she said.

"After I did wake up, I was told I could be in a wheelchair, probably won’t feed myself ever again, and would be severely disabled.

"I actually got out of hospital in three and a half weeks because I was so determined to get back to being the normal me. I got back on a horse again a year after. I like proving people wrong."

Brayshaw went through intensive rehabilitation and physiotherapy treatment to get back to what she called "finally being Georgie again".

Fast forward to 2024, and she is targeting an Olympic gold after her success in the GB women's quadruple sculls at the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade. It was the first time GB had won gold in that boat class since 2010.

Brayshaw is from Leeds but now lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, and trains at British Rowing's national training centre in Caversham, Berkshire.

At the Paris Olympics, she will compete in the heats of the women's quadruple sculls on 27 July with the finals on 31 July at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.

"It would be a dream come true to win gold," she said.

"I’m pinching myself at the moment; it doesn’t feel real to be here.

"It’s been so much hard work and sacrifice to get here; you don’t have to be born extraordinary and special to achieve something. I can’t wait to hopefully make my family really proud."