We profile a lot of people who have turned a negative life experience into a huge positive.
Often helping others. Catriona Williams and her organization Catwalk Trust are always
coming up with innovative ways to raise money for research.
The goal? To get people who have had a spinal cord injury back on their feet.
Up until 2002 Catriona Williams’ life was following the path of a fairy tale. Growing
up in heartland New Zealand she married into an iconic Kiwi family and she was on the way
to the Olympics as an equestrian rider – then the fairy tale flipped, she fell from a horse
and fractured her neck leaving her a tetraplegic. Suddenly this outdoorsy sporty chick found
herself inside a broken body.
Since then Catriona has built a foundation – the Catwalk Trust to find ways with spinal
cord injury to walk again.
Catwalk is very much a big part of my life and all my friends are fully involved, they’ve
been dragged into it in so many ways but they love it as much as we do. We try to make it
fun, I think that’s what makes Catwalk so successful is everything we do. It’s not
about “feel sorry for us”, it’s this is who we are, we’re not dying but you know
what one day we’d love to walk again.
Catriona and her partner Sam Williams live at the Little Avondale Stud near Masterton
in the Wairarapa. They breed racehorses in partnership with Sam’s father.
How would I describe Catriona? She’s become very patient with me but she’s obviously
had to become a patient person being in a wheelchair, as you know...
I wasn’t patient before; I was patient with the horses but not patient with people.
You can ask a lot of our friends what Catriona’s like, she’s inspiring, she’s motivating.
They had been married for just a year when Catriona broke her neck in a riding accident.
Eight years later Catriona is training for the latest fundraising extravaganza organized
by her Catwalk Trust, the Wairarapathon.
This is definitely the Mercedes as far as…Once we get going. If you love speed you’d rather
be on this one but it takes two people to get me on this one whereas Wendy and I can
get on that one. Billy, come here. Are you ready?
The Wairarapathon is part of Catriona’s build up for the New York Marathon, which
she along with a number of her friends is competing in with the hope of raising over
$200,000 for the Catwalk Trust. All twenty competitors are traveling to New York at their
own cost.
We’ve been traveling for over a year now and I must admit at the time I was like “Am
I really doing something sensible here?”
But looking back you can tell how far you’ve come?
Yeah I mean this driveway I’d go to the end and back and it would take me 1 ? hours
so you can imagine how slow I used to go, it was quite painful but it’s quite nice
now when you look back.
Ten years ago Catriona was one of New Zealand’s leading show jumpers competing in badminton
and aiming for the New Zealand Olympic team. After her accident her focus was on building
the Catwalk Trust, which depends on the support of her many friends to help organize the events.
Today they’re getting ready for the Wairarapathon.
It started with a group of friends wanting to raise some money for me and Sam and I had
only just got married, we were on the bones of our bum working really hard.
Had great times with Catriona partying and dancing as she loved to do and then watching
her career riding and then bang the accident and everything turned for Sam and Cat and
obviously friends around them kicked in to help in any way that they could and Catriona
got inundated with requests and people wanting to do something for her and she got quite
embarrassed about that so her thought was to gather a bunch of friends that all had
different talents – there were around nine of us that pulled together and came around
here one day and sat and spoke about what we could do.
And I said to the team “the only thing that’s going to change my life is getting these legs
working again so if we put all our money into research whether it happens in our lifetime
or not why not concentrate on that and then I can get behind it”.
Catriona after about eight hours of brainstorming said “the only thing that people in wheelchairs
want is to walk again” so we all decided that’s what this is about, we’re going
to raise money to find a cure for spinal cord injury.
And the interesting thing is it started off with just a bunch of girlfriends wanting to
throw a bit of a party, raise some money and put it in the right direction – the whole
thing has just blossomed because we’ve enjoyed every step of the way, there’s always a
bit of stress before every event but only because we want it to be perfect.
We thought we might have a couple of parties once every two years and raise a bit of money
and give it to some scientists in New Zealand that might be able to do something for the
cause and then it just grew and grew. We started to look into what can actually be done research
wise and realized that there was such a good possibility that this vision of ours can actually
happen and in our lifetime as well so we all just went for it, absolutely went for it and
now have raised over $1 million.
It’s very much about supporting the scientists and the researchers out there, putting the
money in the best possible direction, we use the New Zealand Neurological Foundation to
help guide us on that. We’re good at raising the money and they’re got at making sure
the right people are getting it.
The goal is a cure for spinal cord injury but Catriona is realistic about the here and
now.
We are working very closely with the Spinal Trust and the Rugby Foundation because their
goals are obviously getting people back into the workforce and home life, I mean that’s
here and now and that’s really important. For us we’re very much focusing on the research
and getting people out of chairs and back on their feet and as we’ve seen recently
with Rex the robot there’s other ways to look at solving the problem.
Catriona is doing everything she can to walk again and it’s a big call, putting your
hope in a future that might not happen in our lifetime. Being around Catriona for the
last couple of days I’ve been thinking about where I am at as well and I guess after being
in a chair for 11 years walking is something I don’t dwell on but I appreciate what she’s
doing.
I would give anything to be back on my feet again and if somebody said “here’s a cure
and it’s going to take $10 million” I’d raise it just like that. At the moment, in
the meantime, it’s raising as much money as we can, keeping the awareness really strong
because I believe there will be a variety of ways to find a cure and it will be a marriage
of a whole bunch of things and not least will be intensive exercise I believe once something
comes through so I think it’s important that everyone keeps their bodies really healthy
so when perhaps the right avenue comes around you’ll be well to take it.
While Catriona focused on Catwalk husband Sam has made some adjustments of his own.
Oh look when she was riding she would be up at the crack of dawn and when she was competing
she’d be coming back home arriving at say midnight or 1am Monday and gee they used to
work. Nine times out of ten I was cooking dinner so the roles have changed and she cooks
the meals now.
As a rider I’d done quite well, there was always room for more and I’d been shortlisted
for worlds and Olympics and things and of course when you ride the horses are a big
part of the equation, probably 80% of the equation and I just unfortunately had the
accident at a time that I was probably peaking but you know this is the way things go and
I feel very fortunate that it happened to me when I was 31, I’d established a lot
of friends and I guess I’d proven myself internationally and I was married and I think
that’s another thing that’s often hard for someone in a chair is socially finding
someone you are compatible with who doesn’t feel sorry you are in a chair, they love you
because of you so I feel very lucky that I had done a lot of things and that it did happen
to me when I was 31. The horses…yeah I miss the riding but I feel I’ve had a pretty
good go at it, there’s other things I miss more and probably the thing I miss most is
dancing.
Everyone vividly recalls the day of their accident. Catriona’s was on the 10th of
November 2001.
What do you remember about that day?
I remember it quite clearly, the horse that I was riding I was riding for a friend, it
was probably the last time I was going to ride it but I really wanted to give him a
good shot for her because she just wanted him to get out there and go at a high level.
I’d already run the course on one of my other horses and gone clear and it was two
fences and you’re supposed to have one stride in the middle and he was a super careful horse
which means they’re a little bit more frightened of the jumps so they don’t like to touch
them. He jumped very carefully over the first – so if you think of a parabola, jump high
land short so the distance ended up being a bit long for him so he ended up putting
two strides in and chested the second fence with his chest and couldn’t get his knees
up and cart wheeled and it could have been my collarbone but it was my neck and I’ve
seen the footage, we’ve got it on video, Sam’s never seen it and doesn’t want to
see it but what I’m pleased about is I couldn’t have stayed on, the horse cart wheeled – I
would have been really angry if I could have stayed on because then it would have been
my fault…I remember being in a lot of pain, I don’t recommend it, it was just horrible
and the thing I remember the most that was the worst was that I was lying there and one
of my girlfriends came up to me and I said to her “please straighten my legs out”
and she looked at me and said “they are”. It’s interesting, you talk to a lot of people
and they say that your brain remembers that last position you were in so to me lying on
the ground I had my knees up as if I was riding just about to jump the jump so that was pretty
hard to take, I knew it was pretty serious at that point.
Horses are still a huge part of their life together; Catriona wastes little time on might
have beens.
I think four months at Burwood and it was pretty tough to be honest, you came home and
you couldn’t get in and out of the house, there were no ramps and going to the loo was
a rigmarole because of the way the doors were, you couldn’t shut the door behind you because
they would open instead of sliding – lots of factors that all of a sudden you just realize
you’re in a chair, you’re not walking and I think emotionally it was pretty tough,
I didn’t see anybody in hospital for the first month. I had all these people wanting
to come and see me and I didn’t see anybody, I had a three bedroomed room and it was chocka
full of presents and cars and things and I said to dad “I don’t want to see anyone,
I don’t want to accept I’m in a chair” – I mean lying in a bed you look normal
but I didn’t want to see anyone whereas now the door is always open and we have as
many visitors as we possibly can, I have a coffee machine I can just press the buttons,
even I can make the coffee but yeah coming out of hospital I think those first couple
of years are pretty tough and I think about the year end two or three you suddenly realize
that you are in a chair for a little bit longer than you planned so get over it and make the
most of it because I worked out that I’m nearly 40 and my goodness if that’s two
thirds of the way through I’ve got a whole lot to do in the next 22 years.
Yeah I’ll never forget when we were in Burwood we were told what would happen after year
one, we were told what would happen after year two and year three and we were going
“that will never happen to us, give it some time” and like yourself you go she’ll
get out of a chair and she’ll start walking again, you always have that belief.