Paralysed eventer Saffron Cresswell selected for Para‑Canoe World Championships in Poznan

Saffron Cresswell, paralysed in a fall at Bramham Horse Trials on 8 June 2024, has been selected to represent Great Britain at this month’s Canoe Sprint and Para‑Canoe World Championships in Poznan, Poland. The 25‑year‑old first sat in a canoe in December 2025 and will race in the VL1 and KL1 classes.

Cresswell began riding at three and moved into eventing “properly” at 13, eventually representing Great Britain at three European championships and earning, as she puts it, “One gold and two team silvers...”. She ran a yard and business from age 15, training and riding 25 horses before the accident; eight years earlier her parents had sold their house to buy a yard and the family lived in two tiny touring caravans for six years before converting part of a barn into a home. She says her school attendance was “68% or something ridiculous” because she was focussed on riding.

Three fences before the end of her under‑25 cross‑country round at Bramham, Cresswell came off her horse Vivendi Hero and says: "I just landed on the back of my head and unfortunately broke my back at T4 level - so chest level - and basically as soon as I fell, instantly knew I couldn't feel my legs." She endured a 45‑minute ambulance journey to Leeds General Infirmary for emergency surgery, was later moved to the spinal unit in Wakefield and spent six weeks bedbound in a private room she calls her “hotel room”. She recalls waiting to see if sensation would return, saying: "So I have this really weird thing because then I was sort of waiting for three to four weeks as if I was going to get feeling back."

Rehabilitation required relearning basic tasks and building tolerance to sitting upright; she describes the effect of spinal injury on circulation and balance: "With a spinal injury your blood pressure gets really lowered. So I couldn't sit up in a wheelchair for longer than about five minutes without feeling faint." Physios gave her small weights to use for her arms—"They were tiny, but in my head, it was a principle of having something to do every day"—and she adopted an athlete’s routine of arriving early and maximising gym and physio time.

A week before leaving the spinal unit she attended the Spinal Games at Stoke Mandeville and tried multiple sports, winning the archery event: "I got six out of six bull's eyes and won the archery out of 110 people." She left hospital on 8 October and tried wheelchair racing, tennis and basketball but says she "didn't love them." After meeting Olympic canoeist Deborah Kerr at a Women's Sport Trust event, Kerr told her to "have a go", and on 23 December Cresswell had her first canoe session; her coach initially "was too scared to let me off the bank in case I capsized."

Cresswell increased canoe training from occasional tasters to four‑hour water sessions plus gym work three days a week, and describes the major challenge as balance without core feedback: "So I'm strapped into a seat because I've got no core function, but I can't actually feel that seat. So I basically feel like I'm floating." She says the sport’s technical demands remind her of eventing and credits repetition for rapid improvement: "The time I needed to achieve was, I think, one minute 26 seconds. And anyway, I'm now down to one minute 18."

Her immediate objective at the Poznan World Championships is to secure an international classification so she can compete for ranking points at events that "can lead to qualification for the 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles." On her goals for a first major international meet she is frank: "Honestly, stay up and get through the start and finish line," and reflects on how quickly her life changed: "But to be honest, I think what actually is more kind of crazy in my head is I couldn't even imagine January me doing this."