Ex-firefighter David Melrose: Wheelchair curling has ‘made me complete again’

Former firefighter David Melrose says wheelchair curling has made him feel “complete again” ahead of his Paralympics debut in Beijing.

Melrose was left paralysed from the waist down after being struck by a falling steel beam in 2010 while attending a fire in his home town of Duns in the Scottish Borders.

The father of two was an active sportsman back then, playing golf and badminton, in addition to having been a goalkeeper in semi-professional football.

He will represent ParalympicsGB between March 5 and 12 in China alongside fellow Scots Gregor Ewan, Hugh Nibloe, Meggan Dawson-Farrell and Charlotte McKenna.

“After the accident, the first years was really just living with disability and trying to come to terms with it,” he told the PA news agency.

“But after three years I found something was just missing inside me – and my wife had mentioned the same thing. I wasn’t the old person that she knew; I was a newer person.

“As soon as I tried it (curling), the feeling of the winning and losing just rushed back. After I started to take it more seriously, my kids actually said to Sheila (Swan, British wheelchair curling head coach), ‘It’s good to have my dad back’.

“I hadn’t realised that I had been missing something. It certainly made me complete again.”

Melrose, who celebrates his 56th birthday on Wednesday, began his working life on a farm and later had a three-year stint as a council gravedigger, before realising a childhood dream by becoming a firefighter.

He was part of a retained crew at the time of his accident, suffering a broken back and spending around seven months in hospital.

During his rehabilitation, he often put pressure on himself to hide his true feelings from his family and received mental health support to deal with the life-changing spinal injury.

“You plan out your life and mine just went upside down at the age of 45,” he said. “It was like, ‘What now?’

“I was quite blase and showed quite a lot of front that the accident wasn’t really impacting on me because I didn’t want the family to think I was feeling down.

“It was hard but inside it was really quite hard. But fortunately the fire brigade had set me up with some sessions with a cognitive behaviourist.

“I got myself sorted out. I’m not ashamed, I was lucky that I got mental health (support) to help me get through that.”

Melrose, who joined the British Curling programme in 2018 and was part of the team which won world silver on home ice in Stirling the following year, is determined to make the most of his maiden Games.

“We can compete with anybody,” he said. “But any medal for us would be tremendous. As long as we bring our A game we should be OK.

“I’m going definitely to try and enjoy myself, soak up the atmosphere, take everything that’s available that we can do, and then when we’re on ice switch back to competitive mode.”