MARK POLLOCK FACES HIS BIGGEST CHALLENGE

Mark Pollock who spoke at our last AGM in April will undergo major surgery next week to see if he will ever walk again.

The 34 year old medial winning athlete and motivational speaker has been without feeling in his legs since his fall from a first floor window while sleepwalking just over two weeks ago. Mark won silver and bronze medals in rowing at the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and he had been attending the Henley Royal Regatta as a spectator and was staying in a friend’s house when the accident occurred.

Mark’s participation in the Round Ireland Yacht Race and may have contributed towards his accident as he was still recovering from having completed the race. During the race Mark and his co-skipper, Air Corps Captain Mick Liddy, suffered severe electrical failure, disabling their autohelm which meant they were unable to sleep for nearly four days in a row.

The Trinity Business graduate has been blind since the age of 22, and he hopes to find out soon if he will be restricted to a wheelchair.

Commenting on his ordeal Mark said ‘I am through the initial stage of treatment now’, ‘I had internal bleeding, I fractured my skull, and there were concerns that I had damaged my brain. All that had been taken care of so far and that leaves my back, which is broken in three places’.

In January last year Pollock survived the sub-zero temperatures of Antarctica to become the first blind person to reach the South Pole. He has been the first blind person to complete the lowest and highest marathons in the world, including the Dead Sea Ultra in Jordan and the Tanzing-Hillary Everest Marathon,  despite his blindness, he now faces his biggest challenge yet.