{"id":32208,"date":"2020-03-09T09:23:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T09:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/?p=32208"},"modified":"2020-03-06T12:20:11","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T12:20:11","slug":"kdarke-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/kdarke-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"On a quest for spinal cord injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"

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SIA Ambassador Karen Darke had always been an athlete, finding a passion for running, climbing and orienteering. But after she fell off a cliff and became paralysed from the chest down at age 21, she didn\u2019t know what was next.<\/h4>\n

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Whilst initially she didn\u2019t know where to turn, or what her future looked like, she soon learned that with friends, creativity and perseverance most of the things she wanted to do, see and achieve were still possible.<\/p>\n

Karen has spent over a decade as a full-time athlete, winning a silver medal in the London 2012 Paralympics and gold in Rio 2016.<\/p>\n

Karen says: \u201cI\u2019m proud of winning a gold medal in Rio, as I never saw myself as an athlete. I always remember pushing my first-ever half marathon just months after my SCI. I was so slow there wasn\u2019t even a finish line any more as the organisers had packed up and gone home. Years later when I started handbike racing, my first few races were like that too. It goes to show that if we decide we want to do something and put our mind and efforts to it, then surprising things are possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen\u2019s gold was Team GB\u2019s 79th Paralympic medal. That sparked the idea of her latest challenge \u2013 Quest 79.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided I would cycle seven continents and nine rides (one on each continent, and two Paralympic Games), and I\u2019d encourage others to join me who perhaps had never done anything like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a coach, counsellor and sports psychology coach, Karen is passionate about helping others get from where they are to a place they would like to be. She has a couple more of her own Quests to complete. One is trying to get to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics. The next is the continent of Antarctica and the aptly named \u2018Pole of Possibility\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a huge challenge,\u201d Karen admits, \u201cbut we plan to take on the frozen continent in January 2022, creating a new pole at 79 degrees latitude and longitude called The Pole of Possibility. We\u2019re trying to get 79 schools, families, individuals or companies involved in fundraising for SIA and to gather all of their names on the flag that we\u2019ll plant at the Pole. We\u2019re also seeking a few corporate connections who would like to partner on the project to make getting the team to Antarctica a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

More about Karen\u2019s Quests and what motivates her to challenge herself and help transform others\u2019 lives,\u00a0 will appear in the next issue of our magazine FORWARD.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SIA Ambassador Karen Darke had always been an athlete, finding a passion for running, climbing and orienteering. But after she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":739,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[376],"tags":[316,377,317,296],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32208"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/739"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armanios.co.uk\/dev\/sia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}