Courage Afoot Simon Robinson was a champion bodybuilder when a car accident cost him his right leg. Fortunately, his best bodypart was his heart BY JEFF O’CONNELL 1) The oil slick that Simon Robinson encountered on a winding road on March 25, 1998, changed the course of his BMW in the blink of an eye. The car veered. A milk tanker was approaching. They met head on. Simon remembers nothing of the impact. For that he can be thankful. He doesn’t remember his spleen rupturing, the vertebrae in his spine crunching, his shoulders being yanked out of their joints, both legs being shattered and his jaw, nose and cheekbone all fracturing, the last in three places. He doesn’t remember being trapped or resuscitated. It falls to Kerry Kayes, the man he went to visit that day, to explain the accident over breakfast six years later. Simon listens, too. The oil slick changed the course of his life forever. The timing couldn’t have twisted the then-31-year-old’s fate any more cruelly. He had been a top soccer prospect who almost made it to the pros, and then he came within one match of representing England in tae kwon do at the Seoul Olympics. Finally, after an arduous, decade-long climb, he had reached a pinnacle in bodybuilding, winning the British championships of the World Amateur Bodybuilding Association (WABA), thanks to a spit-and-polished 240-pound physique. That body now lay in the intensive care unit of Royal Oldham Hospital, broken. How do you treat such devastating injuries? Where do you even begin? Once severe head trauma was ruled out, casualty medics loaded his bloodstream with an assortment of potent drugs, inducing a coma. Only then could surgeons begin the painstaking process of putting his skeleton back together. The most crippling injuries were to Simon’s right leg, mangled beyond recognition below the knee, the entire calf musculature torn off. Gaping wounds and the resulting infections had made the leg toxic. Massive doses of antibiotics were administered, but the poison inched farther up his leg. By April 2, surgeons had no choice. They first amputated the leg below the knee; that would make it easier for Simon to walk later on. Only the poison crept higher. Eventually, they had to cut above the knee to save Simon’s life. Within 12 hours of this second operation, his temperature began to drop, finally. In happier times, growing up as one of nine children in Mansfield, in the heart of steel country, Simon Robinson’s legs seemed destined to carry him far from his dreary surroundings. Lightning fast, he was outstanding in rugby, javelin, cricket — pretty much every sport he played. But it was the green expanse of the football field that offered his avenue of escape. Simon was so good, in fact, that he went on to compete at the national level before trying out for professional teams, although his eyesight, of all things, kept him from making the grade. He couldn’t wear glasses when he played, and his father, a coal miner, and mother, a factory worker, couldn’t afford an extravagance like contact lenses with so many mouths to feed. 2) After the accident, Simon’s partner, Louise Parkin, and their extended family waited in vigil outside intensive care. So did Kayes, a mainstay of the British bodybuilding scene for years and Dorian Yates’ partner in the bodybuilding-supplement business. He was Simon’s mentor before the accident. That doesn’t begin to describe their bond now. After nearly two weeks and serial operations, it was time to release Simon from the coma. Such patients can become involuntarily violent, so the hospital asked Kayes to wait beside him. Not knowing what to expect himself, he brought along another bodybuilder. It took nearly a day for Simon to emerge from the coma, his consciousness ebbing and flowing. Dreams and reality needed untangling. Kayes’ face eventually came into focus. Simon tried to speak, but his jaw was wired shut. “I had to tell Simon he’d been involved in a road traffic accident,” recalls Kayes. “He couldn’t talk or move much, but he started getting quite agitated. And it clicked straight away that Simon thought he was disfigured. So I immediately said to one of the nurses, ‘Get me a mirror, quickly!’ I held it to Simon’s face. He had a white sheet over him, and then he pulled on one of his legs, and it was in traction. I said, ‘Simon, your leg’s broken.’ And then Simon pulled on his other leg, and a stump popped up from under the sheet. His face just went like that,” Kayes says as he mimics a look of wide-eyed horror. “I put my arms around him said, ‘Simon, they’ve had to cut your leg off.’ What can you tell someone?” Among the surreal sensations experienced by Simon upon exiting the drug-induced coma was a phenomenon known as phantom pain. His right foot was gone, but he could still feel it. And the cures that were being administered exacted their own toll. On April 16, he began vomiting blood. Numerous drugs were used to combat the pain and numerous others to reduce fever, and so many chemicals washing through his stomach perforated the lining, causing extensive internal bleeding. This required yet another operation and the removal of a small section of his stomach. Simon’s left leg was so badly injured, with fractures in 10 different places, that under almost any other scenario it would’ve been amputated. Success was by no means assured, but doctors chose to pursue what would be a lengthy, hard-fought campaign to save it. Since Simon had already lost part of one leg, losing any part of the second would severely diminish his future lifestyle. They also noted the otherwise superb physical condition of a champion bodybuilder. If anyone had what it would take to keep the second leg, the doctors reckoned, it was Simon. They were right in thinking he would never say die. After all, once Simon’s dreams of playing pro football ended, they were replaced by an equal passion for a kicking martial art, tae kwon do. By the late 1980s, Simon was arguably the best middleweight fighter in England. He found himself competing for a spot on the Olympic team, since tae kwon do was being introduced as a demonstration sport at the Seoul Games in 1988. In a controversial decision, he missed the open slot by one place. 3) An ancient Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but Simon couldn’t have even crawled after the accident. “I got the nurses to put one of those A-frames over the bed, and I tried to reach it, but I couldn’t get there,” Simon says. “I didn’t have the strength; the nurse had to put my arm on it. It was unbelievably tiring. That’s how weak I was.” Standing up was a tall order, the formerly simple act now harder than his most demanding workouts as a bodybuilder. Once he did finally muster the strength to get out of bed, Simon had to learn to walk all over again. Progress that first year was measured by a succession of walking frames, crutches and wheelchairs. He went through different prosthetic devices as well. The “sockets” had to be adjusted as the swelling around the stump of his right leg shrank. Although progress was glacial coming from so deep in the abyss, Simon inched forward. His rehab succeeded at least in part because he was already battle-tested by the day-to-day grind that bodybuilding progress requires. Simon first got involved with serious weight training when he began strengthening his body for tae kwon do. He became so enamoured of training that, after missing out on the Olympics, he chose to pursue a career in bodybuilding. His lightning-quickness was no longer an asset, but Simon’s natural athleticism held him in good stead. Six months later, in 1990, Simon won a local show and then a regional, the North Midlands Championships of the English Federation of Bodybuilders (EFBB), promoted by Peter McGough, now the editor in chief of US flex. Says McGough: “He looked good then, but I saw shots of him later, before the accident, and knowing the way things are in Britain, I think he had every chance of winning a pro card at the [EFBB] British Championships.” By the late 1990s, after a long, painstaking climb through the ranks, Simon seemed on the verge of doing just that. And he reached at least one pinnacle of British bodybuilding by winning the WABA title in 1998. 4) A champion at last, Simon drove the 100 miles or so from Mansfield to meet Kayes in Manchester. The two spent time at the gym, then headed over to the supplement factory of Dorian Yates Approved, plotting Simon’s future. Simon got in his car and headed home late that afternoon. Speculation was that an oil truck driving along the road leaked, leaving behind a 25-mile-long oil slick. Nearly a dozen crashes occurred on that stretch of road that evening. Simon’s was easily the worst. Simon finally did go home after three months in the hospital. Kayes says that to this day, he has never once heard Simon bemoan his lot in life. McGough’s first encounter with Simon after the accident came in 2000 at the English Grand Prix. “Afterward, there was a banquet, and I went up to the bar, and a guy sitting at the bar starts talking to me — ‘How you doing, Pete? Long time, no see,’ you know? I suddenly realised it was Simon, and I knew about the accident, but there was nothing like, ‘Did you hear about me? I’ve had a real bad time.’ He was just carrying on, and that sort of personifies him. He’s lost something, and he just gets on with it.” Simon was back in the gym within a year of the accident. His workouts are different now. Losing a limb affects every aspect of training because balance is never the same. The first thing a person does when he lies down to bench press is plant his feet, and Simon can no longer anchor himself that way. To compensate, he spent a lot of time on the bench raising and lowering an unloaded bar, learning how to use his abs to hold his body steady. The changes to his leg training are more apparent. Because Simon can no longer do squats, he relies now on leg extensions, curls and presses. The movements all have to be smooth; nothing can jar the prosthetic. He can’t tolerate much cardio, and what he does requires the use of a recumbent bike. Because so much now rides on Simon’s remaining leg, it aches after training sessions and long walks, and it always will. The accident changed Simon’s body, but it didn’t change him in the ways that really matter. He’s still a devoted companion to Louise. He’s still a loving father to their daughters, Teagan, 11, and her baby sister, Tia, 2. He is still learning from Kerry Kayes, the extraordinary friend and mentor he went to visit that fateful day in 1998. He still loves bodybuilding, too. It may have saved his life in the accident. And in the darkest hours of rehabilitation, it gave him purpose when it would’ve been easy to have none. Although he has done numerous guest-posing appearances since the accident, Simon Robinson has not competed again. Symmetry was his trademark on the stage, and judging makes no allowance for a missing limb. Nor are bonus points awarded for what lies below the mounds of muscle. The measure of this man is his heart, and that’s hidden from view. M&F