Must an epiphany, by its very nature, be spontaneous? What if a cognitive awakening comes by degrees, over a period of several years? And what if the episode that clefts a single life into two distinct chapters is heralded not by light breaking through clouds and spiritual euphoria but by a portentous moment of physical catastrophe?
In September 2019, Pete Reed, a Seattle-born, Gloucestershirebred Royal Navy officer and highly decorated Olympic rower, felt the vitality drain from his legs. Then 38 years old, he’d been hospitalised three days before by an onset of chest pains and numbness in his lower limbs while tackling an assault course with the Royal Marines. But it was this second, more severe spinal stroke — a disruption of blood supply to the spinal cord — that would leave him paralysed from the chest down.
meets Pete, who won Olympic golds at Beijing 2008, London 2012
