Paralysed rider helps others get back on two wheels

After a motorcycle accident in 2003 left him paralysed, Talan Skeels-Piggins admits he thought he’d never get back on a bike again. Five years later, all that changed, and two years after that he and his friend Russell O'Neil founded Bike Experience, a charity, to help others get back on a bike.

Talan Skeels-Piggins, Inspirational

“After my accident I didn’t think I would ever ride a bike again; it wasn’t until 2008 that I thought it possible. I was in the United States and I was riding a snowmobile, which kept getting cross-rutted and was moving around all the time, and I thought, if I can ride this I can definitely ride a motorbike.

“When I did get back on a motorcycle in 2008, it was the best day of my life,” Skeels-Piggins recalls. “I felt free of my wheelchair for the first time and it was amazing, it was magical. But then I started thinking that there must be more people like me.

“In 2011 I converted my GSX-R600 SRAD as a way of helping other people get back on a bike. Russell and I did track days together on a pair of GSX-R1000s, and he’s one of our instructors.

“We start with paddock stuff, getting them used to pulling away and the feeling of being back on a bike again. We have also designed bolt-on stabilisers so they can get used to it first, or we’ll start them off on an automatic bike, before moving on to focusing on gear changes and increasing their speeds on a marked out circuit.

“You can see a change in people as they go through the experience. It changes their attitude and it changes their families too. These are often people who are paralysed or amputees, we’ve had people come who have had a stroke, and we even had a blind guy come along. And these are all people who never thought they’d ride again, and we help them realise that it is possible and that they can get back to enjoying motorcycles.

“Last year we ran 15 events and helped 37 different riders.”

Skeels-Piggins has also taken up racing. He says: “2014 will be my third season racing against able-bodied competition. I have to start from the back of the grid, as I need supporting and holding upright before I launch, but it’s great. It’s only when I’m off the bike and talk to them afterwards that other racers realise I’m in a wheelchair.”

The Bike Experience has 13 confirmed dates for 2014.

www.tbex.co.uk

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