I am truly humbled by Sophie Etheridge, and will never ever complain again about the aches and pains in my joints. Sophie is an adaptive athlete, who developed complex regional pain syndrome after a car knocked her off her bike as she was travelling to triathlon training. Now a wheelchair user, Sophie is tough, determined, an achiever, who won back her swimming identity stroke by stroke, swimming through the pain.

In 2021 she swam the Two-Way Windermere, all 21 miles of it. She set up the Adaptive/Disabled Open Water Swimmers (ADOWS) group on Facebook and was astonished by the demand for open water swimming community among those with disabilities. She has only recently started writing about this life-changing accident and how it felt, and about the huge importance of swimming in her life now. I am honoured that she has been open to sharing her experience here on Swimmingpod.