The road to Rio has been paved with adversity for Paralympian JONATHAN COGGAN - but that’s just made him all the more stronger. EMMA PALMER talks to Essex lad Jonny, who will represent team GB in the wheelchair rugby starting tomorrow...

It would have been easy for football-mad teenager Jonathan Coggan to think his sporting dreams were over when his world came unceremoniously crashing down. On April 11, 2000, Jonny found himself being flown to hospital by Essex Air Ambulance after a road traffic collision left him paralysed.

Aged just 16 at the time, he had played 11 football seasons with the Woodham Radars and loved all forms of sport, from table tennis to squash and badminton. He dreamt of becoming a professional sportsman one day.

By a strange twist of fate Jonny, now, 33, is just that. As a member of the GB Paralympic Wheelchair Rugby team, Jonny is about to take part in his fourth Paralympic Games in Rio, Jonny, of South Woodham Ferrers, remembers the day his life changed forever:. “I was looking forward to college on the day of the crash because it was sports day – my favourite day of the week,” he said.

“It was part of my BTEC in Public Services at Southend College and my dad was driving me there when a white van swerved across the A132 and smashed headlong into us.

“After the crash happened I remember my dad getting out of the car and I was thinking, maybe I should get out too, but I couldn’t. I had suffered a whiplash injury that broke my neck and damaged my spinal cord, leaving me paralysed from the chest down with partial movement in my arms.

“In a situation like that your life really has been turned upside down. It can no longer, and can never, and will never, be the same again. Just like that.”

Jonny, however, is not a man to dwell on the past, or on his misfortunes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really thought back on the last 16 years,” he explains. “I’ve always had something to work towards, look forward to and fight for. What happened in the past has gone. I just think you have to take the positives and move on. After all, other things carry on – people still get up to go to work and college, they go on holiday, watch TV and go to the pub. Some people have bigger things to cope with.”

After the crash Essex Air Ambulance was called to transport Jonny to a specialist spinal hospital. “As soon as they arrived, I knew I was in safe hands. The speed with which they worked and got me to Stoke Mandeville Hospital was critical to my recovery,” he said.

Jonny spent almost a year in hospital undergoing surgery and physio before being allowed home.”

“I don’t recall the moment I was told I wouldn’t walk again – it was more of a growing realisation,” says Jonny.

“But I took one day at a time in a positive way otherwise you don’t go forward.

Jonny has competed in three Paralympic Games – Athens, Beijing and London - three World Championships and six Europeans, where he was part of the winning team in Finland last year.

Now Jonny is gearing up for the wheelchair rugby competition at Rio where he and his team will go all out for gold.

Jonny may or may not be grasping a medal when he returns from Brazil, but in the eyes of so many of his supporters and friends he is truly a number one champ - and medals are just a bonus.

Jonny said: “I am very happy with the choices I have made and proud of my achievements so far.

“Most of all I want to highlight how I may not be in such a positive position if it hasn’t been for the Essex Air Ambulance and the Air Crew, who were able to airlift me at such speed and efficiency, to the hospital that had the expertise to treat me.”

  • AN inspirational film has been created by Essex and Herts Air Ambulance to celebrate Jonny’s achievements and to highlight the role the trust had in saving his life.

The video can be viewed via the charity’s websites and Facebook and Twitter sites throughout September in anticipation of National Air Ambulance Week which takes place from September 19 – 25.

Laurie Phillipson, Essex Clinical Manager for the Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust, said: “Since Jonny’s accident in 2000 we have attended 15,000 missions.

"Road traffic accidents make up nearly one quarter of calls we attend and injuries can often be time critical so the faster we can get the doctor and critical care paramedic to the scene and help treat the patient, the better.” 

The film is entitled Speed, Strength and Skill and Jonny says these three factors were pivotal to his rescue on that fateful day thanks to team of life-saving medics who saved him.

The Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Trust is a charity providing a free life-saving Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) for the critically ill and injured of Essex and Hertfordshire. 

It offers patients a level of care normally only found in the hospital emergency department.

To see the film, click here.