ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT is presented by WIAWIS.
Whether you believe everyone should be given second chances or not, sport seems to find a way to mend what may seem unfixable situations.
For Patrick French, now a compounder from Kyneton, a town outside Melbourne, Australia, archery did not provide an immediate resolve to a horrific work accident he suffered after chopping a tree down.
Nine years on though, it has since given him a career that his life pre-incident would never have led to as a para athlete.
“It wouldn’t have been a bad one, but I never would have chased athletic excellence,” said the 31-year-old on his former job as a concreter. “Every little kid dreams of being an athlete, going to the Olympics, Paralympics, whatever it may be, every little kid dreams that, but then you get to a point where life starts to take over, and then you forget about it.”
“When I stumbled across archery, I was like ‘Alright, I’ll give this a go,’ and then it became a reality. It was almost like a whirlwind or something.”
French became a tattoo artist a couple of years following a drawn out legal battle to get compensation for his accident and only discovered archery two and a half years ago, initially wanting to do it for hunting.
The ‘whirlwind’ has quickly swept him right into world level archery with the Aussie now the world number 20 in the compound men open rankings and he is coming off the back of his first Paralympic Games this summer, a rapid rise to say the least.
