Hickling fully mended

AFTER suffering a horror mountain biking accident that could have paralysed him, Chris Hickling is fit to lead Guernsey's men's tennis team in Rhodes. In February the island tennis captain suffered a horrendous crash in his native New Zealand. He fractured a bone in his neck which the doctors say could have easily damaged his spinal cord.

Hickling has spent the following months recuperating and he is now back in the island and training hard for the Island Games in two weeks' time.

'I fractured the fourth vertebra in my neck and if the bit of bone goes in and into the spinal cord it's all over, but if it luckily goes out and you don't move it, it can reattach,' he said.

'A lot of New Zealand mountain bikers have been paralysed that way. I just thank my lucky stars, but I don't dwell on it.'

The 34-year-old also stretched the ligaments in the 'AC' joint in his left shoulder. It happened when he was thrown off his bike while careering down a national level downhill track with his younger brother in the mountains near Christchurch.

He managed to walk to his car after the accident and get to a local hospital where he was X-Rayed and a fractured bone in his neck was diagnosed.

'Because he's younger than me I thought I could beat him, but I've not ridden for two years and he rides every weekend,' said Hickling.

'It was a really thin track and my bike went down a bank and I fell about five metres. I couldn't move my neck or my arm but I could move my legs which meant I wasn't paralysed.

'So at the end of the day it could have been a lot worse. It's really nice to be back in Guernsey and playing tennis again.'

The accountant returned to the island this week and he says he is now training more than two hours a day ahead of the Island Games.

Along with Rob West, Dom McLuskey and Pat Ogier, Hickling makes up a strong Guernsey men's team that must be vying for the gold medal on the Mediterranean island.