Media and Press

Pain barrier no obstacle to sporting desire
Newcastle Herald, 29 Aug 2000

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FOURTEEN years ago Janine Shepherd was hit by a truck while riding her bike in the Blue Mountains. Yesterday she walked in the Olympic Torch relay at The Entrance in what she hopes is a precursor to her own Paralympic ambitions as an equestrian. After a year of painful recovery, Ms Shepherd, the author of best-selling book Never Tell Me Never which recounts her horrific experience and is now a movie starring Claudia Karvan, was able to walk again.

Now a partial paraplegic, she has no feeling below her waist and her legs are thin and wasted.

She secures her feet into the stirrups of her saddle with elastic bands when riding her horse, Sharni.

She competes in the open section in Riding for the Disabled dressage competitions and regains a sense of freedom when on her horse.

'I love it. I just started learning how to jump,' she said yesterday.

Aiming to compete in the 2004 Paralympics in Athens, Ms Shepherd refuses to allow chronic back pain stop her from realising her dream.

Her aches and pains are a legacy of an event she cannot remember. Suffering from post-traumatic amnesia, all Ms Shepherd remembers after the accident is waking up in hospital about a month later.

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