Lily Rice, of Tenby, Pembrokeshire was diagnosed with hereditary spastic paraplegia at the very young age of eight and now is the Women’s wheelchair motocross world champion. WCMX is similar to BMX and Skateboarding competitions where athletes score points by doing tricks.

Lily now only 16 is the first European woman to land a backflip in her chair and the second worldwide. Lily has come a long way from a child who struggled to come to terms with having to use a wheelchair to learning her wheelchair could be the way into an exciting new world and set her free.

“I didn’t want to use the chair at all,” she says. “I tried to hide it in the corner of my room and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

Lily saw the wheelchair as a negative thing in her life but then thought what is the point in trying to hide it. After research and come persuading to her parents Lily got a custom-made wheelchair. Once involved in WCMX lily showed a natural potential and with some intensive training within months landed a backflip.

Lily says: “I’d spend hours on the same ramp just trying to get it right. I fell a lot, forwards, backwards, sideways. But eventually I landed it and it was the best feeling ever.”

It wasn’t all plain sailing though Lily lost confidence in 2018 after a bad fall where she crashed out face first injuring herself quite badly.

Read more here at the Mirror

Follow Lily on Instagram @lilyrice_wcmx