"I am going to show now that you can move forward from something that feels like the end of the world."From: NewNowNext
After wowing as a member of Great Britain’s women’s national sitting volleyball team at the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Claire Harvey quickly became a fan favorite and national LGBT role model.
She continued to train and was poised to compete at the Rio 2016 games in shot put and javelin, but just days before she was scheduled to depart for Brazil, a freak mishap forced her to withdraw from the competition.
Havey’s Olympic dreams came to a speedy end while she was winding down after a practice.
“I broke my hand by a 6kg kettle bell falling off a shelf onto my hand whilst I was stretching,” she told Gay Star News. “I was laid on my stomach and my hands out in front of me. It fell and landed on the top of my hand.”
“My medical team…[was] fab,” she continued. “We immediately started ice, elevation and anti-inflammatories.”
Despite their quick response, however, hand injuries are difficult to treat because they “swell badly,” which makes it nearly impossible to “see what’s really wrong.”
“The team kept reviewing it…but by Wednesday it was obvious it wasn’t healing sufficiently for me to be able to train and be at my peak for Rio,” she concluded. “It was a real emotional roller coaster.”
Though she’s upset that she won’t be able to compete in Rio with the rest of the team, she’s confident that Great Britain will do extremely well at the 2016 games.
“The athletics squad of Team GB are really strong, I totally believe they will bring home many, many medals,” she remarked.
Moving forward, Harvey (pictured left with former Prime Minister David Cameron) plans to continue her work as a role model and advocate for the UK’s LGBT community.
“I hope that I can still inspire young LGBT people–in so much as I am going to show now that you can move forward from something that feels like the end of the world.”
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