Daily Post: Paralysed champion inspires bike victim

Paralysed Australian mountainbiker Renee Junga still dreams of competing, but on four wheels instead of two. The 20-year-old, who crashed at the world championships in Rotorua, had little hope of a normal life a few months ago, but that’s changed thanks to Te Puke motocross champion and paraplegic Niki Urwin. Junga will never walk or ride a bike again but she hasn’t given up hope of a future in sport and is eyeing downhill wheelchair racing.

Junga was on a practice run on the 2006 UCI Mountain Bike Trials and World Championships 4X track on Mt Ngongotaha in August when she crashed, breaking two bones in her neck, two ribs, her sternum and permanently damaging her spinal cord. She spent two months in Auckland Hospital before returning home to Queensland where she remains in hospital undergoing rehabilitation.

She hopes to be out of hospital next month. Junga has become close friends with Te Puke-based mountainbike champion Vanessa Quin and her partner Urwin, a former motocross champion who was paralysed after crashing during a competition in Melbourne four years ago.

Speaking to the Daily Post from her hospital bed, Junga said she met Urwin while contemplating her future after the accident. He helped her realise there was life after a spinal injury and now she dreams of competing in a sport again. “I was really down and scared and then Niki showed me that you can still live a normal life after something like this. He gave me hope.” Urwin said he felt compelled to support Renee. “There aren’t many people out there with similar injuries. The biggest thing is to just accept what has happened and try to find a way to move on.”

Meanwhile, Junga’s mum, Sally Howie, is singing the praises of the Central North Island sportsman who helped her daughter face her future as a paraplegic. “She was finding it really difficult to come to terms with her future but Niki has shown her that there is life after a spinal injury.” The thought of her daughter competing in downhill wheelchair racing terrifies her, but “I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it … Renee is Renee and she loves sport.”