“GEogina? Hello? Georgina? Georgie Brayshaw thought as she parked her car on the side of the road somewhere in Bern, Switzerland, leaning her car against the back window to try to get better reception. “How’s Switzer…” The phone hung up. “…You think so? You cut it…” Then it fell down again. “How about Sweets…” A truck drove by. “…it was raining really hard.” Brayshaw, 30, was returning from the second World Cup rowing event in Lucerne with the rest of the British women’s quad sculls team. They won gold again, just like they did last year at the World Championships in Belgrade and the European team in Szeged earlier this year.
At the time of the interview, she had 60 days left to prepare for the Olympics, and although she would never say it, by then the team would be favorites to win another gold medal. But Brayshaw lives her life one thing at a time, and before all of that she had a long drive to complete, a ferry to catch, and now a story to tell. Once she started doing this, the distractions, the static, the traffic, the background chatter of other passengers in the car disappeared. Because this is one hell of a story.
Brayshaw never wanted to be a rower. When she was little, horseback riding was her hobby. Brayshaw’s family was not wealthy and she described herself as a “public school girl from the North.” But her parents bought her four riding lessons for her seventh birthday. Soon she was taking them once a week, then twice, and then volunteering at local yards on the weekends as well. They ended up buying a stake in a horse with a partial loan. “The relationship just kept building until, by the time I was 15, I was looking after him full-time.” His name was Harry, and she adored him.
Then something unexpected happened. She couldn’t remember anything before, during or after. “The last thing I remember was probably about an hour ago. I remember arriving at the place and meeting all my friends and I remember setting off like across the fields and that was the beginning of it but I don’t remember anything else . The next two or three weeks were gone. “I just don’t know. ” She pieced it all together based on the recollections of the people she was with.
They galloped across the fields in a group and came to an asphalt track. “Of course when you come to a road you have to slow down. But Harry was feeling a bit bolder, I don’t remember any of this, it’s just what I was told and I tried to stop him like taking him for a trot or walking on the road . And he was just an idiot. He spun and slipped on the road. Then everything went black. She was taken to hospital by air ambulance and remained in a coma for the next nine days.
Her parents, three brothers and friends don’t know if she will ever wake up, or where she will be if she does. When she emerged from it, the left side of her body was completely paralyzed.
“I could only use my right arm and could only smile with half my face.” It took her several months of treatment to learn to walk again, and another full year before she felt normal again. “Even then, I would get in the car and close it with my right hand, or I would walk around school with my left hand on my shoulder and my teacher would ask me, ‘Is your arm hurt?’ I’d say, ‘Oh, no, sorry, I don’t use it. “It’s a weird feeling. I remember my gym teacher just telling me: ‘Yeah, you know. ” Eventually I had to do it, you know?
They asked Brayshaw if she wanted to resit her GCSEs a year before, but she was adamant she didn’t want to be stopped. She has a twin brother and she hates that he might abandon her. In hindsight, she’s old enough to admit it was probably the wrong decision. “But for me, I just didn’t want to be different from everyone else at the time. After the accident, my friends used to say they felt like I wasn’t the same Georgie anymore, and that was bad enough, you know? I just Wanting to fit in with everyone and be the same person so I didn’t take off years or anything like that and I decided to just keep trying to get through it.
That’s how she ended her life from that point on. Soon, she was riding again, despite doctors warning her not to. “As soon as I got out of the hospital I would go right back out to the yard and help clean up the trash and stuff like that. My friend used to ride Harry, and when he was sweaty and exhausted, I would ride on him and take him around . Then she started galloping again. “It wasn’t his fault. This is just one of them. What happened to me was neither good nor bad, that’s life. I was always taught that you have to start over and try again. I also love proving people wrong. A similar situation exists with boating.
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She only started playing the sport in college. She throws herself into everything because she wants to make the most of it. She kept rowing, in part because people told her she couldn’t do it. She was rejected the first time she tried to qualify for the national program, “but I just thought: ‘I’m going to come back and try again'”. When she was finally accepted, she had to endure four years without funding and the disappointment of being left out of the Tokyo Olympic team. But after everything she’s been through, it doesn’t seem that difficult for her. Her mother is recovering from a stroke. “When something like this happens, you really say to yourself, ‘You know what? Just do it.'”
The hurt is still with her. “You can see some differences between me and other rowers. My left side is weak, or I don’t have much control over my left side. We need a lot of extra training to get these neurons to fire properly, but even Now I notice the difference too. But I just accept myself for who I am and I will never blame my accident. In fact, it gave me the courage and determination to try.
As she allowed herself to think beyond this summer, her thoughts turned to what she might do with her story. “I hope I can show people with brain injuries that it does get better. I’ve tried to go to schools and talk to kids. Because if you have a dream, no matter what your grades are in school, no matter how much money you have, It doesn’t matter where you come from, as long as you strive for it. It doesn’t take anything extraordinary to do it. Because I’m an ordinary girl and everyone does. Do. But you just have to keep going.
